April 21, 2010

Happy Trees


Trees and I have a love-hate relationship. I love sitting in the shade and listening to the birds. I hate the hundreds of bags of pine needles I've taken care of over the past four years of home ownership. Still, as the book says...

A Tree Is Nice by Janice May Udry

A Tree Is NiceThis 1987 Caldecott Award winner has a wonderful vintage feel. A sat through all 30 pages without any problem thanks to the large illustrations and short sentence structure. The language is very simple, as if a young child were narrating. Page by page, it describes all the wonderful benefits that come with having a tree. "Even if you have just one tree, it is nice too. A tree is nice because it has leaves. The leaves whisper in the breeze all summer long." The illustrations alternate between full-color paintings and black and white ink sketches. Their simplicity is the perfect match to the narration.


5 Orange Potatoes has issued a Children and Nature Awareness Month Challenge. She challenged fellow mommy bloggers to get their kids to play outside everyday in April, rain or shine, to explore the natural world around them. I'm a little late to the party, but I was inspired to scrap the indoor craft I had planned and go outside with the girls. E loves those Tree Faces you see around the neighborhood, so I thought we could make our own.

Using leaves, blossoms, and berries in our backyard - along with a few pushpins - we gave the first tree her own extreme makeover.


Then I turned E loose to create a tree face of her very own. I thought she did a great job!


I was inspired by 5 Orange Potato's hyacinth blossom octopus and made for E these Azalea Blossom Fairies. E discovered if you pull out the stamen it leaves a nice hole, perfect for pushing into a couple leaves and berry stem!




I'm linking up with:
- ABC & 123 Learning's Show & Tell

15 comments:

  1. hahaha GREAT tree faces, way better than the store bought ones.

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  2. Beautiful tree and I love your review, I will be requesting it at the library!

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  3. Those tree faces just make me smile!

    When we were house hunting, my main stipulation, was absolutely no pine trees in the yard - the needles are a terrible pain!

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  4. The Azalea Blossom Fairies are so beautiful.

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  5. They are so lovely! I wish we could grow azaleas over here! Thank you so much for sharing this and the challenge.
    I'm off now to add you to the link love.
    lisa

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  6. I"ll take pine needles over foot gouging gumballs any day. blech!

    Sweet sweet craft idea :-)

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  7. I'm linking you tonight with the cute azalea fairies.

    lisa

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  8. I love those little fairies! We have those berries and flowers all over the place...maybe I will show that to my little boy.

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  9. What beautiful fairies! And I love the tree faces! We'll have to try that.

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  10. These are way cute! Thanks so much for the fun idea, I'll be linking.

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  11. What a fun idea! They all turned out so cute!!!

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  12. Such a fun and cute and EASY idea! Thanks for sharing!

    Corinna
    www.myscrapbooklife.com

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  13. I love this idea of creating a happy tree. Pine needles are a pain. My dad has been creative with his by using them in place of mulch. It actually looks pretty!

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  14. nice faces! (In defense of pine needles, they were used to make baskets in days of old. In reality: I cut mine down almost as soon as I bought my house! Still have the azeleas's though.)

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