For the past few years, The Educators' Spin On It has hosted a book exchange, where a group of bloggers are each paired up and send each other a book and open-ended activity for their child. This was our first year participating and, must say, it was a blast!
We got paired with the creative Lauren of Tutus and Tea Parties and her daughter, who is about Kay's age. I've found that getting books in the mail is one way that gets Kay excited about reading, but when she opened the envelope and found a book called "Too Much Glue", it was just too perfect. This for the girl who is always using "too much glue"! She looked through the rest of the envelope with the activity but was eager to read this book. And so was I.
It's a wonderfully silly book, about a boy who uses - you guessed it - way too much glue for a project and then jumps on top of it and finds himself stuck. Kay was repeating words from the story by the second time we read it.
Lauren also sent us a person-shape template on heavy paper, a new bottle of glue, and a baggie of various materials for a collage. In the story the boy gets all sorts of things stuck on him while his friends try to free him, so the baggie was full of sequins and googly eyes and ribbon, to recreate the story.
They sent us the idea of putting Kay's face on the template, but Kay didn't want to wait for that to happen, so she drew her face herself, complete with blue eyes and blonde curly hair.
When it was time to glue the pieces on, she wanted to use "too much glue" like the story, so I repeated what the teacher in the book said, "Glue raindrops, not puddles." It's our own inside joke now.
They also sent us a recipe for making...wait for it...our own glue! I've seen the idea before, but always skipped over it because I figured it would be too difficult. Surprisingly it doesn't look too hard and we'll definitely be giving it a try!
See more fun books and activities to go with them (for all ages!) at The Educators' Spin On It and the Summer Book Exchange Pinterest board!
