Bubble Wrap Painting and Shaving Cream Marbling - Reading Mural

Last summer, we made a floral reading mural to keep track of the books we read over the summer.  Every time we read a book, we would add a petal or leaf to the mural with the title of the book written on each petal or leaf.  We also added butterflies and a sun.  It was a very popular activity with C and R, plus it kept them writing (they wrote the titles) and reading all summer.

Creating a reading mural is on our Summer Bucket List again this year, but we didn't get to it until this week, so unfortunately, it won't have all of our summer reading titles on it.  Oh well, better late than never!

To create the background for our reading mural, I cut some waves out of poster board.  I put some blobs of blue, green, and purple poster paint on the surface and R painted the waves.

C wasn't in the mood to paint, so R did the whole thing.

Once she was done painting, we placed bubble wrap on top of the wet paint and she pushed on and stepped on the bubble wrap to create a bubble effect in the ocean waves.

I cut some fish shapes out of white card stock.  Then we decorated the fish using the shaving cream marbling technique.

I began by giving C and R a tray with shaving cream and a few squirts of acrylic paint.

They used popsicle sticks to swirl the paint (don't over-mix - you want the colors to maintain their individual identities!).

Once they were done swirling, they took the card stock fish shapes and pressed them in the mixture, then pulled them out and put them aside for a few minutes.

We typically wait at least ten minutes to let the color set, and then use a popsicle stick to scrape off the extra shaving cream.  I have posted this technique many times; it's always a favorite around here and the results are so pretty!  Sometimes we use food coloring instead of paint; both work wonderfully.

Each fish will represent one book read.  We will continue adding fish until our ocean is full.  Here is a sneak peek with just a few of the fish on the ocean waves background (before any book titles are written on the fish):

I love the contrasting colors!

You may have noticed that this reading mural is tiny compared to the one we made last year.  Well, my due date is five weeks away and I thought it was best to not be too ambitious with getting every book read on the mural.  If need be, we can always expand with more poster board waves and fish that may or may not be marbled!

If you want to see more marbling, check out the gorgeous fall leaves made by Little Wonders' Days by clicking here!

Favorite Books of the Week

Our favorite book of the week is I Can Be Anything by Jerry Spinelli.  This book is so much fun as it follows a young child's thought process about what he wants to be when he grows up.  Should he be a paper-plane folder, puppy-dog holder, mixing bowl licker, or a tin can kicker?  The different job possibilities are all so sweet and fun.  Also, the illustrations by Jimmy Liao are vibrant and the perfect accompaniment to Spinelli's rhyming text.  This is a great book for young children, and the simple text combined with the illustrations also make it a good book for an early reader.

We also read Blueberry Girl by Neil Gaiman this week.  I have read so much about this book.  Everyone loves it, I love it.  The language is lovely and the art is beautiful.  I thought it was so very sweet and the perfect gift for a girl graduating from high school or for a mother to be.  I read it through twice before reading it to C and R.  I had a feeling they would not care for it, and I was right.  They both expected blueberry girl to be some sort of action heroine.  They were thinking along the lines of Ladybug Girl, I guess.   I love the book.  I love that it is about a baby growing into a woman.  In my mind, the message is perfect, but my children just weren't ready for it.  That's okay; I'm still happy that I read it to them.  We will definitely revisit this book.

C and I finished two chapter books this week.  The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White is about a trumpeter swan named who is born without a voice and tries to overcome this disability by learning to read, write, and play the trumpet.

Catwings Return is the second book in the series by Ursula Leguin.  In this book, two of the winged cats decide to return to their birthplace to see their mother and find a surprise when they get there.

C and I enjoyed both books and we are currently trying to decide on our next chapter book.

At this point, we have decided that our mural of summer books is complete.  I'm not sure if you can tell from this photo (taken in our basement playroom where there is not a lot of natural light), but every petal, every leaf, every butterfly, and every ray of sun displays the title of a book we read over the summer.

We read a lot of books and really enjoyed keeping track of them this way.  I know we forgot to add some books to this mural, and we did not include all of the easy readers that C read, or the books we listened to away from home.  We are thrilled with the final result and look forward to doing this again next summer.

I am linking this to What My Child is Reading at Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns. 

Flower Power Summer Reading

This summer we are tracking all of the books we read.  This is not the first year we have tracked our summer reading, but it is the first year that we created a special reading mural. 

I gave C and R a large sheet of brown craft paper that I cut from a roll we have.  They mixed yellow and blue paint and covered the entire paper.  They had fun experimenting with rollers, bath poofs, sponges, and paintbrushes to cover the paper. 

We cut green strips and yellow circles out of construction paper and taped them to the "meadow" once the paint dried.

I cut petal shapes out of different colored construction paper.  Every time we read a book this summer, we will write the title on a petal and tape it to our mural to create flowers.  I am so happy that I did this because C and R get very excited every time we add a petal, and they ask to read more books!  This is also great writing practice for C because he loves to write new titles on the petals! 

I am sure we will have to expand our mural before the summer is over.  I am thinking of adding leaves, butterflies, bugs, etc. with book titles after we fill up all of the flowers.  We'll see!  Whatever we do, I know we will be proud of the final results!