Illustrating Oz (spoilers included)

We are now reading the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. If you are anything like me you will read that title and think "what? seriously? at age 4?" because I know that's what went through my head when I found it on a list of read aloud books for grades k-3. The real problem is that I had only ever seen the movie, which is definitely not for grade k, maybe not even for grade 3, but the book is a completely different animal. Sure there have been deaths I had to explain (most notably that of the wicked witch of the east) and some other bizarre conversations that have taken place (evil is a difficult thing to define) but on a whole the book is really kid friendly and is much longer and more involved than the two youth books we'd read previously, which is a really good thing.

It is going to take us nearly two weeks to get through the wonderful Oz, and in order to enhance comprehension and immersion in the book Calvin has been illustrating the events as they happen. I'm looking forward to the picture book we'll have when we are done.

Aunt Em's house (complete with portriats of Dorothy, Uncle Henry, Aunt Em, and Toto), and the house being carried away by the cyclone (as it is called in the book).

The house in Munchkinland, and the three munchkins who come to thank Dorothy for freeing them from the Wicked Witch of the East.

The scarecrow does have a body, but it's yellow so it's hard to see here.

If you haven't read the book the Kalidahs will be as unknown to you as they were to me, but Calvin (and Mr. Baum) would describe them as having bear bodies and tiger heads and they are a momentary terror to our five familiar travelers. Where Calvin and Mr. Baum would disagree is the smiles, but Calvin gives all creatures smiles in his illustrations—his world, after all, is a completely happy place.

We'll get back to you when we finish the book later this week.

This is how we felt

It's the librarian that made us do it. I have intended to get Calvin a felt board for over a year now, but something or other just always seemed to get in the way. Mostly I struggled between feeling intimidated by the thought of making one, and appalled at the thought of buying something that should be so easy to make. I think I would have gone with my own ignorant waffling for quite some time if Calvin hadn't suddenly become obsessed with the act of playing librarian. We love story time at our library: we love the books, we love the music, we love the rhymes, and oh do we love the felt. It became suddenly impossible to stall the felt board project any further when I walked into our play room to find him sitting on his chair, reading books to his story time participants (of which Mouse was a part).After that I decided it was finally time to put my intimidation to rest, and making a passable felt board was so incredibly easy, I can only wonder why I waited this long.

For our board:
My mom brought us a large cut of felt from one of her craft store trips and I already had a foam board on hand in poster-board size (whatever that is, I didn't measure). I set the foam board on the felt and cut (the felt) to within three inches on all sides. Starting with one side I then folded over the extra and stapled in in place, making sure that the back end of the staple is at the back of the board. I used about 10 staples on the long side and six on the short, although this was probably overkill. Since not all the staples seemed secure I also used three inch masking tape to adhere the loose ends of felt in the back. The board rests nicely on our easel, or on the floor, or pretty much anywhere else he wishes to take it.

For our characters and shapes:
Squares of colorful craft felt are easy to find. We found about twenty different colors at our JoAnn Fabrics store (did you know they actually make felt out of recycled post-consumer plastic bottles? It's called eco-fi), and our Meijer also had a small selection of colors in their craft section. These squares run about 25 to 30 cents per piece. You can also buy adhesive backed felt for creating characters from multiple cuts and colors, although I just used a hot glue gun (better than regular or fabric glue because it doesn't bleed through the felt). I started out with some craft stencils I had, and I cut the first 9 numbers out free-hand, but when things started to get more specific I turned to the internet. To make a collection of animals to go with our Old MacDonald CD I did a Google image search for coloring pages of each animal (for example, "coloring page duck"), saved the image of my choice to my desktop, and used my image preview to get it to the size I wanted. Then I used tracing paper to trace the image from the screen, taped the tracing paper to the main color, and cut out my animal. Voila! To add other colors, like spots on the cow, I taped the same traced picture (now already cut out in the shape of the cow) to the new color of felt (in this case black) and cut out around the details (keep in mind that you want to cut shapes from largest to smallest, since you will be cutting the tracing paper along with the felt). I used hot glue to adhere the different pieces, and a pen or marker to add details I couldn't cut out (although this snags to felt, so I use this technique sparingly).

Our felt collection at this time consists of a school scenario (for Mary Had a Little Lamb), an Old MacDonald collection, and a large Pumpkin with several different shape pieces for making different jack-o-lantern faces. In subsequent shopping trips we have added new colors and now googly eyes as well, and Calvin has requested several more fun sets I can't wait to make. This is one of my favorite toys so far.