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

This 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