Food + Art & Picture Books = Fun for All Ages!

Reading is Delicious!

Yesterday I started my School Visit Spotlight series... Growing Readers at Gresham Elementary. You'll be inspired by this librarian's efforts! More in the series coming this week.

But first, I've just been preparing for ASLA conference, where I will present again "Reading is Delicious: Fresh, Fun Food Programming for Kids."

Last time (and the first time ever!) I presented this program was last month at Fay B. Kaigler Children's Book Festival in Hattiesburg, MS.

I shared all kinds of ideas for combining food with just about every other part of the curriculum, and then we had some hands-on time to play together!

We painted with asparagus paintbrushes and stamped with cut pieces of onion and bell pepper.

Behold, our work of art!

We used jeweler's loupes to examine strawberries, and by applying the Private Eye inquiry method, we came up with "bones" for poems.

A few of my favorite bones:

Mars with 1,000 eyes
quills on a porcupine
tiny bees in a red hive
craters
Grandma's quilt from Gee's Bend.....

...Anyone else suddenly wanting to write a poem??? YES!

We made a watermelon paper/googly eye craft.

We did some blueberry math... and shared our "Best" & "Worst" about blueberries.

So much fun! And now I get to do it all over again with Alabama librarians.

I love this life!