Oodles of Animals by Lois Ehlert {Book-based Craft}

Can't make it to the zoo? Then I suggest you check out Oodles of Animals by Lois Ehlert. In this book your child will meet lots of animals beautifully crafted out of paper shapes, not to mention learn a little bit about each in rhyming text that is quite poetic.

I thought it might be fun to attempt to make our own paper cut-out animal in the style of Lois Ehlert. So I asked baby bookworm to select an animal she would like to make. She chose the butterfly (I guess she's all girl after all). Then I let her pick the colors she wanted to use, and we rounded up our materials for the craft:

Our Materials

• Scissors (we used adult, child, and "fancy")
• glue (we used Elmers and a paint brush for application, but a stick would be fine too)
• Googly eyes (optional)
• Colored paper 
• Sequence & glitter for decoration

Creating our shape butterfly

I used the book as a guide and cut out various shapes that could be assembled easily into a butterfly. While I was cutting out the shapes with the "fancy" scalloped scissors and "adult" scissors, I let baby bookworm practice cutting on her own with her child-safe scissors (this was just to keep her occupied). 

Then, I guided her with questions such as "What shape is this?" or "Where do you think the diamond goes?"  as we placed the shapes together to make a butterfly. Last, she decorated the butterfly with sequence. 

I thought this was a cute activity to reinforce some of the shape and color concepts from the book. Hope you have fun creating your own animals!