stART: Little Oink

This week we read Little Oink.

It's another one of Amy Krouse Rosenthal's clever, ironic tales, like the one we did for stART a couple of months ago: Little Pea. (Little Pea was always upset that his parents made him eat all of his candy before he got his broccoli for dessert.)

Well, the only thing Little Oink does not like is: Mess up time. "Because that's what you have to do when you're a pig. Make a mess, mess, MESS!" He says, "All my friends get to clean their rooms. Why can't I?" His parents tell him if he wants to grow up to be a respectable pig, he must first learn how to make a proper mess. He is only allowed to go out and play after he puts on dirty clothes and makes plenty of messes. He even thinks to himself, "When I grow up I'm going to let my kids clean up their rooms as much as they want."

At the end of the book, Little Oink is rewarded for his good behavior. He runs out to play. He sweeps, scours, and scrubs his tree house. The kids loved this twist as much as they loved Little Pea.

There is a 3rd book like these by Rosenthal and illustrated by Jen Corace. It is called Little Hoot. Little Hoot, of course, wants to go to bed at a reasonable hour, like all of his friends. But instead, his parents make him stay up late, like a good little owl.

After we read the book, I printed off pig outlines I found from googling..."pig outlines." I told the (freshly bathed with wet hair) kids to cut them out. When I left the room to get the paint, I heard Sissy wail, "Mine broke!" I printed another one and cut it out for her.

They glued their pigs onto pieces of construction paper. I told them that instead of using paint brushes, we were going to use pencil tips. I instructed them to stick the tips of their sharpened colored pencils into paint and then "dot" their pigs. I told them to try to keep the pencil straight up and down while they made their dots so that it wouldn't smear or make long dots.


They were working so quietly on their projects, I whispered to Ryan, "What's that sound?" It was a HUGE change from the whole very loud evening. Tornado heard me and said, "That's just the washing machine." I laughed and said I didn't know he could hear me, "It's the sound of silence. It's nice."

their "little oinks"

I had envisioned tidy dots filling the entire pig so that when you look at it, it's almost entirely colored in. They said they were finished, though, after this amount of dots. Regardless, the pigs are very cute, the kids worked hard, and they got to use a different kind of tool for painting.

When I picked out the book and said we were going to do it for our stART project, Tornado's idea was to paint "laundry," just like Daddy Oink happened to be doing on one of the pages.


So after he finished his pig, he asked if he could now paint laundry. He drew the outlines of a pile of laundry with a Sharpie, then painted. I thought it turned out really cool. I guess I'll let Tornado pick out the idea for the project next time.


Sissy and Dash wanted to paint something, too. Sissy painted a flower garden, complete with "butterflies and fish." Dash started painting laundry, too, and then he went abstract.

For more story + art project ideas, visit A Mommy's Adventure.

AND

(My Muffin Tin Monday giveaway is open until Friday night.)