Today I’ve written a guest post over at Play-Activities all about some picture book sources of inspiration for what to do when there’s “nothing to do“. Play-Activities is a wonderful website created by Melitsa ALL about play ideas – if ever you’re stuck for an idea of what to do with the kids that’s fun and creative Play-Activities is a wonderful place to visit.

Melitsa is one of the powerhouses behind the Raising Playful Tots Index, but for me she will always have a special place here on Playing by the book – she was the first person ever to leave me a comment when I stared this blog almost a year ago!

So for Melitsa today I’ve written about three fun books all about what to do when there’s nothing to do (plus, of course some fun music and play ideas) – I do hope you’ll visit and then explore Melitsa’s great site!

A clue...

Through simple line drawings and the clever use of frames to create pace Barbara Lehman tells the story of a young girl who, on her way to school, comes across a book, bound in red, lying on the pavement. Upon opening it up she is both magically and literally drawn into the story of a young boy, on an island far away, who has a matching red book. These tomes act like two-way mirrors – the girl can look in to her book and see the boy on his beach, whilst the boy can look through into the girl’s urban world full of skyscrapers. Once these two characters are united we see their red books slipping away and a new set of connections being made by the next lucky people to happen upon the red books.

The clean, uncluttered, apparently simple illustrations are superb – by changing the size of her illustrations, varying the perspective, framing some scenes and not others Lehman has created a real “page-turner”, a story that that swept up M and ignited her imagination. Like stepping into paintings (as in Katie and the Sunflowers or Flyaway Katie), stepping into books and physically becoming part of the story is exciting draw for the reader (young or old), offering whole new worlds of possibilities.

Additionally, I loved the metaphor of books enabling us to connect with people far away, in different countries and from different cultures and how that connection, and personal adventure, can be passed on by passing on the book to someone else. A specific book may come into our lives for a short while but the experience can stay with us long after and be something that connects us to others.

The cyclical or perhaps more aptly the moebius-strip-like construction of the story reminded us of another lovely wordless book – Flotsam (which we reviewed some time back, here) by David Wiesner. The complex and detailed illustrations in the book by Wiesner made me reflect on how engaging the illustrations in The Red Book are, despite being almost at the other end of the scale when it comes to (apparent) simplicity and minimalism.

The landscape the girl with the red book inhabits is one of high skyscrapers and cheek-by-jowl buildings. Inspired by this, we set about making our own cityscape to play with and in.

First I covered several boxes in brown parcel paper. This may not be necessary if you are using brown cardboard boxes, but I’ve found that lots of boxes (eg for nappies) are hard to paint on with tempura paint because of the shiny surface. If you do use paper to cover your boxes then I recommend using masking tape rather than regular sellotape as again, paint will adhere nicely to masking tape but not so well to shiny sellotape.

Once the boxes were dry, the girls used some window stencils I had prepared and sponge-painted the windows on to the buildings. Either I had to hold down the template or we used masking tape to temporarily keep the stencils in place. The girls used sponges rather than paintbrushes to keep paint seeping under the stencil to a minimum, so our window had relatively sharp edges.

J particularly enjoyed using the sponges!

Once the windows were dried the girls set about creating their city with the help of some lego…

… and a lot of fun was had by all!

The Red Book: ** (2 stars)

Whilst making our city scape we listened to:

Other activities we’d like to do inspired by The Red Book include:

I’m hoping this post will be part of the next Get Crafty carnival over at Redtedart’s Blog, where Maggy writes wonderful things about books, play and art – a wonderful combination that I’ll think you’ll love too! If you’d like to contribute to the carnival (on the theme of “Made by Man”) there’s still time…

Photo: Longhorndave

Billy’s Bucket by Kes Gray, illustrated by Garry Parsons is both a wonderful celebration of the power of imagination and a warning to parents who do not take their children’s creativity seriously!

All Billy wants for his birthday is a bucket. Not a bike or a computer game. Just a bucket. His parents try unsuccessfully to persuade Billy otherwise but eventually a trip to Buckets-R-Us takes place. Billy returns home utterly delighted. He fills his bucket with water and so begin hours of play.

Every time Billy peers into his bucket he sees different watery worlds – crabs, sharks, divers, perhaps even a mermaid play in the water, and Billy is mesmerised by it all. His parents, on the other hand, are dismissive. They start off by humouring Billy (“What’s in your bucket now, Billy?” giggled his mum. “Seven sea lions and a walrus,” said Billy. “Of course there are, Billy,” laughed his mum and dad.) but soon they can’t resist teasing him a little; they try to persuade Billy to lend them his bucket so that they can use it for some household chores. Billy refuses. He loves his bucket and the worlds it contains. Indeed he goes to bed that night very happy – his bucket is “the best present in the world.”

The following morning Billy comes down to the kitchen to find his bucket missing. Although distraught it is Billy who ends up having the last laugh – it turns out his Dad borrowed the bucket to wash the car…and, well, let’s just say Billy’s Dad is now left looking somewhat foolish for not believing in Billy and the power of his imagination.

Please try to find a copy of Billy’s Bucket – the story is a fantastic testament to the power of imagination and a gentle reminder to those of us who might at times be far too sensible to believe in a little bit of magic. Kids will love it that Billy was proved right – there were, after all, marvellous sea creatures in his bucket, and parents will share a wry smile of recognition at the behaviour of Billy’s Mum and Dad. I also love the story for its delight in a simple birthday gift – a bucket – not a Wii or a trip to Disneyland – and in this respect it reminds me of Katie Cleminson’s Box of Tricks (which I reviewed here). Another book which could work well along side Billy’s Bucket is Polly Dunbar’s Penguin (which I reviewed here). All three are lovely birthday-themed books which rejoice in a child’s ability to imagine and create personal narratives.

The illustrations in Billy’s Bucket are bold and bright – J particularly enjoyed them. And whilst I don’t think they have the artistic flair of Katie Cleminson’s or Polly Dunbar’s illustrations they are nevertheless great fun to look at and an important part of why this book can hold the attention of both M (5) and J (1) at the same time.

To go with Billy’s Bucket we made our own buckets filled with sea creatures – but these were no ordinary buckets – their contents became our pudding one evening….

We used:

M made the gelatin as per the instructions on the packet, and simply added some blue food colouring for the “water” to go in the “buckets”. Jelly/Jello might work just as well, if you can get it in a blue colour . Once prepared, M poured the blue gelatin into the buckets where we left it to set for about an hour – just enough time for the gelatin to start firming up, but not for it to become too firm.

M then used a fork to push the sealife sweets into the water. Because the gelatin was already partly set the sea creatures appeared to float in the water and not sink all the way to the bottom.

Once the buckets were full of sea water and sea creatures they were left in the fridge to fully set.

Am I really showing you a photo of the inside of my fridge?? This is not at all what I anticipated when I started blogging…

Here’s our final collection of buckets full of wriggly sea life:

Here are the girls enjoying their buckets after dinner!

Billy’s Bucket:*** (3 stars)

And here’s the music we’ve been enjoying alongside Billy’s Bucket:

And just to show that some of my music is a little bit more up to date than the trio above we’ve also been listening to Ocean Night Song by Laura Veirs!

Other crafty activities which could work well alongside Billy’s Bucket include: