Friday, September 3, 2010

Picture Book Fun: The Potato People

A while back during one of our book clubs with our home schooling friends, we read the story The Potato People by Pamela Allen.

This is a story about a little boy named Jack. He spends every friday with his Grandma and on this one particular day they make Potato People.

Their creations proceed to become the centre of the story.

Of course you simply cannot read the story of The Potato People without making a few of your own. So that is what we did.

Materials Need:
2 largish potatoes, cut the end off one so it will sit flat on the bench
jewellery wire (some thin and some slightly thicker)
beads, pony beads
feathers
foam shapes
pom poms
other adornments
toothpicks
pva glue or double sided tape
Will Come In Handy:
pencil
pliers
stapler


Choose your potatoes, one will be the head, the other will be the body. Cut the end off the body so that it sits flat on the bench. Join the head and body together with toothpicks, you will need anywhere between 2 and 4 depending on the size of your potatoes.

Use the thicker, stronger wire to make arms and legs. To avoid sharp ends roll a pony bead onto each end. Pliers come in handy here to roll the wire over.

Use the thinner wire, to make crazy potato people hair. Ours was mutli coloured so it worked superbly. Wrap the wire around a pencil to form a coil, slide it off the pencil and slightly stretch it. Poke one end of the wire into the head of your potato person. Keep adding hair until you are satisfied.


Now it's time to make a face, we placed all of our adornments on a table and just left the kids pick and choose what they wanted to use. Some needed adult assistance. A stapler (or at least some unused staples) comes in handy to push in things like pom poms and foam shapes.

You can even add clothing, out of feathers, materials or whatever you have laying around really.

Our potato people sat around watching us until they went mouldy and we had to bid them farewell. I can't wait to do this again when C is a little older.


I am linking this to stART - A Story + Art = stART





Vote for us. One click is all you need!



8 comments:

Ticia said...

I remember making a potato fish for a science assignment once in junior high, that was super fun.

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

This is an awesome craft - and look how many you made. I might take it easy though and make them with playdoh :)

Michelle said...

What a great project and it looks like a fun book too! I will have to see if I can find it at our library. I am so glad that you were able to link up to stART and share your book and art project :0)

Lynn said...

How incredibly fun! This would have worked well with our Ireland themed learning this week too. :)

sbswtp said...

These came out great!!! It looks like they were a lot of fun to make :)

Jeanette said...

Oh! I absolutely love them! How much fun this must have been.
My kids love their Mr. Potato Head toys and my father is always teasing them about how he had to use real potatoes when he was a kid. We can do this and then my kids can tell grandpa they used real potatoes too! :-)

The Homeschool Den said...

What a cute idea and I loved how that tied back to a book you read together! My kids would enjoy doing that.
Liesl

Debbie said...

These are so cute! They made me think of the Mr. Potato Heads. I love them!

Post a Comment

Make my day, leave a lovely comment :-)

Related Posts with Thumbnails
 

Blog Design by: Relevant Designs