Thursday, January 7, 2010

The Ugly Duckling Hand and Footprint Craft

I found a hand and footprint swan craft, at FreeKidsCrafts.com, that I thought would be a great story stretcher for Hans Christian Andersen's The Ugly Duckling. I planned to do it this morning with the children, as a stART project (a story + art link up at A Mommy's Adventure). But, I ran into a snag. All the copies of the story were checked out from the library.

Then, I discovered we had the story already sitting on our bookshelf, in the "stories and fables" volume of our Childcraft Encyclopedia set. I'm not a salesperson at all, I learned that lesson when I was twelve, and tried to sell subscriptions of Grit Magazine around the neighborhood. But, if I was going to try my hand at selling anything again, I think it might the Childcraft Encyclopedias. Even in this world, of instant information access, these books can be handy things to have.

After reading the story, we followed the instructions for making our swans.


Or, I should say my five year old followed the instructions.




My youngest, who is very three right now, decided she wanted to cut, and glue on her own. So, her swan turned out a little different.




But, since The Ugly Duckling is ultimately about beauty being in the eye of the beholder - that worked out too.


It's great to be a homeschooler.

9 comments:

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

I think that your 3 year old did awesome. Cute crafts, and I love the Ugly Duckling story. It's kind of disturbing though to think that it's one of Andersen's most optimistic stories :)

Ticia said...

"who is very 3 right now," okay that is such a very true statement. Love this craft idea.
I'm thinking a fairy tale unit this summer......

April said...

Very cute craft! Its so weird because I was looking for a swan craft about a month ago for a 2 1/2 year old and this would have been perfect! I really love the ugly duckling story by the way:)

April Mitchell said...

Those are the cutest swans!!

Trudie said...

Love this! I really enjoy doing handprint art with my little girl!

Brimful Curiosities said...

That is one of the neatest hand/footprint projects I've seen! Your 3YO did a really good job even though she didn't follow the directions.

sbswtp said...

What a great project! And it came out really cute! :)

Anonymous said...

I love this! ☺

Michelle said...

What an adorable project! I love that it is 3 dimensional.

Oh my goodness, I have an almost 3 year old who is beginning to act "very 3" I am going crazy!!!

Thank you for linking up to stART this week :0)