Chickee cuddles

There is chicken poop on my kitchen floor. I mention this to the sizzler and he says he dropped it there, by accident. So I say "well, if you dropped it there, why didn't you clean it up?"
His response: "I didn't know I dropped it there."
Really?!
Now, before you go judging me and my unclean house you must know that we have a new batch of baby chickens. Yep. We do. Five lovely little cheepers who eat and poop, a lot.

The fun part about getting our new babies is naming them. Our chickens are not for eating so they have to have a name! There's five in our family so we each got to name one. My sweet son named his little Araucana, Rosalina. I think that is a spectacular name for a chicken, don't you? El named hers Alice, Big Bubba named his Jed Dowell (after his friend, weird, I know, but it's better than the last time he named his Burnt Fries), the Skipper couldn't make up his mind but I think he's settled on Mr. Winkles. I named my precious baby, Lucille.
So, the other morning the sizzler and I were cuddling on the couch with our fuzzy friends and he had a great suggestion. He says "let's read some chicken stories!" Now those are lovely words to a bibliophile mama!
Yes! Go look for Chicken Sisters. Off he goes. Then I had a real proud mama moment. He brought back several stories along the theme of chickens, farms, etc. Oh, how I love it when things are thematic! And here's my boy picking out stories from our library on a theme. Sigh. Grin.

We took turns reading our chicken themed stories to our babies. The chicks were cuddled up in towels as we pet their heads. The sizzler and I snuggled under a cozy blanket. Pure bliss.

So how did the chicken poop get on my kitchen floor? Well, after this mornings chickee cuddle the sizzler went to dump the turd in the towel into the trash. I guess he missed.

Picture book maker

Oliver Jeffers is amazing! He is recent creative influence in the sizzler's life. I could just hug him for inspiring my boy.

What was the inspiration you ask? Watch this

 

 

We watched this video a couple of times. We laughed. We marveled. We thought could we be picture book makers. That is pure creative inspiration flowing. You don't pass that up. You jump in your boat and ride that river!

Hmmm, how should we do it? Do you want to draw the pictures and I will type the words? I ask the sizzler.

Then I wondered if there was a cool app for making books. He loves working with the iPad, let's look.

Well what do you know! I found an app called Book Creator. Perfect!

Now for a story idea. One of his latest obsessions is the Lego ghost train, so I suggested we make a story about the adventures of the ghost train. He loved the idea. We make a good team!

So then I guided him through the process of creating a story board, getting him to think through the plot. Then the fun part started. We went outside and set up the scenes and he took pictures with the iPad. We even set a fire on the tracks!

When he had all the photos we went inside and learned how to put the photos into his book. I told him I would type the words for his story as he hasn't learned to keyboard, yet. But Book Creator has this fabulous feature where you can put a sound button on the page. Once we discovered this he could do the whole thing on his own. He would decide what to say and then record himself reading the story. He even included fun theme music. It's quite hilarious!

He was so involved in this project. He couldn't get enough. He decided to make a second story. His new author pride was oozing. He was a picture book maker. Yay!

When his friend D "read" the ghost train story he loved it and he couldn't wait to get started on his own book. The inspiration continues.

So, thank you Oliver Jeffers for inspiring my son to be a book maker too!