This Thanksgiving Mobile is a fun little craft for kids to put together over the Thanksgiving holiday. 

My idea behind this was that kids could be do this with family at Grandma's or at Aunt Joan's or where ever you go to celebrate Thanksgiving. 

PREP

To prep this craft, I printed off holiday inspired clipart onto white cardstock and cut them out. 

This wishing well was made for World Dream Day, Sept 25th and it's just as simple as you'd expect a Wishing Well to be. 

Take a coin.

Make a wish.

Drop it in the well.

 The top is removable so the coins can be taken out, counted and reused. 

This passive program spoke to all ages and gathered quite a number of participants. 

I mean, who doesn't like a wishing well?!

In addition to this, I also made a Dream Jar printable that kids could take home to complete. 

Click here for my free printable Dream Jar PDF

 For a Dog Man celebration week, we had take-homes and in-library activities for the kiddos to do. This series is super popular right now and because I had never read them, I took a morning to sit down and see what they were all about which was instrumental when finding a direction for my crafts and activities. 

Here's what I came up with...

1. Cloning Petey

This one was ripped straight out of A Tale of Two Kitties, where Petey orders a cloning machine and Lil Petey is born. 

It's exactly played out as it is in the text. 

Kids are invited to pull a whisker from Petey's cheek, insert it into the DNA chute, press the start button and open up the door on the side to see if the cloning machine worked!

Inside the machine is Lil Petey saying, "Papa?" just as he does in the book. 

While this one did take some prep work, the self-directed activity props really drew kids to the table and non-Dogman fans were very interested in the cloning machine!

By having kids drop the cat whiskers inside the DNA chute, that helped me gather stats for this. 

 2. Repeating Patterns

This activity has no connection to Dogman other than the use of series characters. The idea came from Pinterest when I stumbled across a repeating pattern worksheet with sailboats and teddy bears. 

Instead of making a worksheet, I decided to throw up my patterns on an end cap so kids could complete the patterns in the library!

.... Then I decided to also do a worksheet for kids to take home which was less work and more popular than this but hey, trial and error. Sometimes things work and sometimes they don't. 

 Click here for the PDF for the repeating pattern worksheet.

3. Officer Knight and Greg Organ Matching 

Have you read DogMan? If YES, skip the next paragraph. If NO, read on. 

The origin story of how DogMan is created is this: 

Officer Knight (man) and Greg (dog) are in an explosion. At the hospital, Greg's body is dying while Officer Knight's head is dying so doctors decide to combine the two, attaching Gregs healthy head to Officer Knight's healthy body. TADA! DogMan is created. 

The foundation for this activity comes from that scene.

 

 

Here's the sign that I had set out by the activity... it explains it all.  👉👉👉

SO...

For this one, I made bodies for Greg and Officer Knight with dotted spots to show where the organs would go in each. 

Organs were printed out on cardstock, laminated and then magnets were glued to the back of them. 

Officer Knight and Greg were taped to a magnet board and the organs stuck up there.

Kids could just match the organs where they belonged and after they left, I'd reset the board for the next kid. 

It helped that this one was right in front of my desk because it got a LOT of action. 

Maybe because the magnet board was on the floor propped against the table? 

Either way, here is what I made for this one...

Click  HERE for Officer Knight's body  💜 Click HERE for Greg's body  💜  Click HERE for their Organs

DISCLAIMER: The BODIES aren't going to print to the size but the ORGANS will. I have NO IDEA why the bodies are printing single page size. If you use them, you will have to do some tweaking to get them to the matching game size I used. Here are the JPEGs if you can make it work easier with those. 

4. Finger Puppets

This page was a printable take-home and inspired from a scene in ... phooey, I forget. 

The part where Petey is telling Lil Petey a story about them using finger puppets! 

 I had meant to add dotted lines around the characters, showing where to cut but forgot. 

 

  

5. Book Display

 

The font used for my display signs is called Rainbow by Kiara Billioners and can be accessed HERE.

Hope these activities and printables help you in your DogMan planning! Let me know how your group likes them 😁

This entry will contain templates to one weaving and two feather crafts. These are Native American inspired and were used in our Covid-19 summer to-go craft kits in lieu of our in-house programming.

The story that went along with these was "When Turtle Grew Feathers" by Tim Tingle. This is a Choctaw version of Aesop's "The Tortoise and The Hare".

Crafts were prepped and packaged in brown paper sacks. They were set out on tables for families to come in and pick up. During this time, we also began curbside service so families could call in to ask for a kit and have it delivered to them outside of the building.

Crafts aimed at tween aged children and would be good for a school-aged book club.

 Paper Weaving

The Choctaw Indians used river cane to weave baskets for everyday use such as storing food, carrying items and trapping animals during hunts. Many women used natural dyes to add color and patterns to their baskets.

This craft lets kids practice their own weaving skills.

Print out the template on paper - I used cardstock for the base and construction paper for the strips.

There are 2 sheets on the PDF. The first sheet with the turtles is the base and the second sheet is for the strips of paper.

Instructions: Print out pages. Cut along the thin black lines on the page with turtles. Do NOT cut the thicker lines at the top. Weave the paper through so that the turtle images are covered. This is the basic foundation of weaving.

Instructions aren't on the PDF, just the printable pattern. This can also be done with regular copy paper.

Click here for the Paper Weaving PDF


Feather Quill 
Original idea comes from Krokotak.com and was actually used last year during our Harry Potter Finale last year. In fact, we were able to use our leftover supplies from that.

All that's needed is pens and/or pencils. Print the template onto construction paper, color it, cut it out and attach it to your writing utensil.Tape or glue works fine.

Easy peasy.

This was the template used (...I like to squeeze as many things onto a page as I can) but visit the link above for the original template!

Feather Bookmark

This was partially swiped from my coworker who has been focusing on crafts for 2nd grade and
under. She had found this adorable feather template for her kiddies to color and I loved it.

Supplies for this craft were colored cardstock, these feathers printed onto copy paper, clear contact paper, and ribbon (optional). Then of course scissors and coloring utensils were used by the kids to complete.

The contact paper should be more than double the width of the bookmark.

Each kid received 1 feather, 1 bookmark sized piece of colored cardstock ( sized to be larger than the feather) precut ribbon and pre-cut contact paper.

Step 5

Instructions: 
1. Color feather before cutting out. 
2. Attach feather to one side of the cardstock using tape or glue. 
3. Flip bookmark over and attach ribbon to top of cardstock.
4. Using clear contact paper, fold sticky side around the front and back of your bookmark. Make sure you do not trap your ribbon inside the contact paper! You want it to dangle out of the top so that it will stick out of your marked book.
5. Cut excess contact paper from sides  

There were two crafts for our Knights and Dragon weekly summer kits: Dragon Paper Chain and a Knight's Shield. It also included a writing prompt and shield templates to design your own crest on. Unfortunately, this kit wasn't as creative as some of the others, but this is what I've got!

Dragon Paper Chain

This printable dragon paper chain template, as pictured above, is very straightforward.

Dragon face comes from Mr. Printables.com. Originally it was a face mask, but I've scaled it down to purpose and blacked out the eyes.

On the PDF, the face has been outlined to be the same thickness as the wings... which were free handed with a Sharpie.

The body of the dragon is has 2 parts and should be printed front and back if possible.

On one side are scales to color and on the other side are prompts to answer. "If I had a time machine...", "I'm currently reading...", "My favorite book is..." things of that nature.

Click here for Printable Dragon Paper Chain PDF

The 2nd page is intentionally left blank.

Knight's Shield 

These were made with hot glue, cardboard, aluminum foil and a cutting tool.

I free handed a template that was 5½ inches from top to bottom. These were traced onto cardboard, cut out, wrapped in aluminum foil.

The final product can be seen in the beginning picture (that's a cat, btw).

On the back of the shield is a little handle to hold it. It fits just one finger and is a strip of cardboard, warped to create a shape. The tops and bottoms are hot glued to the back of the shield.

This was our prompt...

 Knights would have had colorfully decorated images called a coat of arms carved into their armor and embroidered onto clothes and flags. This helped identify who they were or who they supported. Being able to be
identified on a battlefield through a coat of arms would have been very important years ago. 

These emblems might have elaborate or simple geometric shapes, animals, flowers or other defining features. 

Certain objects or animals would mean different things: foxes symbolized intelligence, a lion meant courage and an elephant represented strength. 

Think about what defines you and create your own emblem based on those things. Take a moment to draw out your coat of arms on a piece of scrap paper.


 Here's the template that I made to trace on to my shields.

In addition to this, we also passed out a page with other shield shapes, as pictured in the beginning picture.

Click here for a PDF of those templates. 

In full disclosure, my coworker found those off so I have no idea where they came from!



Writing Prompt

Since our Summer Reading Program is all online, we've got more than a few reading logs from CSLP

Sideways? Blogger, why do you do this to me?

that we don't know what to do with!

We were able to give out reading logs for our writing prompt in these craft kits.

If you've read my DIY Journal post, this prompt might sound familiar to you!

I was sitting in class, day dreaming about all the things I'd rather be doing when I looked out the window and my jaw dropped. A giant Ender Dragon was circling the skies of our school! I raised my hand to tell the teacher when it suddenly it landed in the school yard. I knew what I had to do.

ago and the White Rabbit. This is the only front and back activity.
Click here to read more about the board

"The Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll, is a nonsensical poem in Through the Looking Glass, one of the books in the Alice series. Many of the words are made-up words but the poem describes a beast.

There were really 2 separate prompts for this poem specifically. Kids were encouraged to read the poem, paying special attention to the words describing the beast and then draw a picture of what they think the Jabberwock would look like.

Then we turn our eye to similes and metaphors. In the poem, there is only one of these. Kids were tasked with finding it and then identifying it as either a simile or metaphor.

After doing that, they get to practice writing their own!