Monday, September 17, 2012

A Julia Donaldson Sunday Afternoon


I happened to chance upon this poster some weeks ago and immediately thought "how apt!".

Pic above from Bookaburra

This is because I will be contributing a guest post for a fellow blogger friend, Winnie, who is featuring a "My Favourite Children's Author" guest series on her blog.

Julia Donaldson is one of Dumpling's favourite authors and to date, she has read almost all of her titles. 

We like the easy rhyme in titles such as Zog and the heartwarming title "Stick Man". When Dumpling was young, simpler titles likes Hippo has a Hat and One Mole Digging a Hole kept us company for many nights.

She liked The Gruffalo so much that her 3rd Birthday Party was centered around the theme with a private screening of both the play and the cartoon. Additionally, Mummy Sue here went into an "overdrive" spending some loooong hours in front of the computer crafting a comic strip e-invitation using key elements from the Gruffalo story and cartoon.

I am saving the 3rd Birthday story for another day as part of my Birthday Blast series but here is a sneak peek of what was part of the storyboard.


Pic above: serious DI work after our photoshoot to fit her in. I had worries that the kids may be frightened but the feedback from the parents were that the kids found it hilarious and really loved it. LOL


Pic above: even the menu was not spared


Anyhow, so off we went on a Sunday afternoon to the Bookaburra event where we watched a screening of The Gruffalo cartoon and we were also looking forward to the Cave Baby Story Telling and Finger Painting activity.

I was initially quite worried about the crowd but perhaps with it being a Sunday (family day and all), it was a tame crowd. From the chuckles (the adults) and the giggles (the kids), it was clear that the film is a hit with the young and the old.



However, to our disappointment, the story telling was cancelled. Dumpling was very disappointed as it was one of the rare occasions which I allowed her to skip her nap.

So, she occupied herself with finger painting on a Cave Baby sheet.


Dumpling was done with the activity rather quickly and I chatted with one of the staff, Denise who explained that the story teller had something urgent to attend to and hence the session was cancelled at the last minute.

When she realised that Dumpling was actually looking very much to it, she extended other craft activities to Dumpling.



To... (and this is really cool) Egg Painting!

Denise (below) did not just demonstrate and entertain Dumpling (and then 3 other girls thereafter) with the egg painting exercise but she also took the time to share the story Tyrannosaurus Drip with Dumpling (which the craft activity was based on) before she started the craft.

I was impressed both with her love for the book as well as taking on the initiative to share the love with the little ones. :)


Pic above: Here, Denise used marbling oil/part and dripped the various colours into a bowl of water



Above pic: the marbling oil paint then gets transferred to the "egg"

And when Dumpling told Denise that she wanted to try her hand at doing everything on her own, Denise was entirely OK with it and let Dumpling choose her colours, added the oil paint to the bowl and then "painted" the eggs.





And as you can see, this totally made Dumpling's afternoon!

Looking for more fun ideas with Julia Donaldson's titles, stay tuned for my guest post over at Winnie's on the 15 Oct!

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