Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Read Along with Helping Little Hands

I am so honored to be part of the read along at Helping Little Hands. If you haven't seen what Polly and fellow bloggers have been up to, be sure to click the link below or in my sidebar to see all of the great books and crafts that have been posted so far!

Around here, we love robots. So the book I chose to share is The Robot and the Bluebird by David Lucas.

The book is a wonderful story about a robot with a broken heart. Being deemed "unfixable" he is thrown out to the junk pile where he befriends and helps a bluebird struggling to fly south. The bird takes up residence in the space where his heart used to be, and once again the robot feels as though his heart is soaring.

After reading the book (and taking a moment to wipe my tears), we decided to make our own robots to love.

First, I made felt boards (just as I did during Dr. Seuss week). These are SO easy to make! All you need to do is glue a sheet of craft felt to cardboard and cut out various shapes of felt. I used my pinking shears on a lot of the pieces to make the robot look more...well...robotic! And of course we had to give our robots a heart!


Next we made robot pillows to hug!

Wild One has no idea what is going on but insisted on being a part of the picture


To make your own robot pillow you will need:
  • robot coloring page
  • scissors
  • fabric markers
  • light colored fabric
  • stuffing
  • coordinating thread and needle or sewing machine
Cut out 2 pieces of fabric for each pillow you want to make (I cut mine to the same size as my coloring sheet). One piece will be the front of the pillow, the other will be the back.


Print out your robot coloring sheet (the one I used is from here at Confessions of a Non-Domestic Housewife) and lay a piece of fabric on top of it. Trace the design using fabric markers.


Let the kids color and decorate their robots with the fabric markers. When they're finished, follow the instructions on the package to set the marker.


I love that they added lots of birds to their pillows (Pinky drew birds for Chaos)

Place the top of your pillow (the robot picture) FACE DOWN on top of the bottom of your pillow and stitch on three sides using your sewing machine or by hand. Turn right side out.

Stuff the pillow, then sew closed the 4th side.



You're finished - give your robot pillow a great BIG SQUEEZE!!!


We had such a fun time with our robot crafts that we plan to have a complete week dedicated to robots soon. I hope you'll check back!

Thanks for stopping by and be sure to check out what Polly has in store for the rest of the month at Helping Little Hands!



Linking to:
We Play abc button play academy Shibley Smiles

10 comments:

shawnacy said...

how fun! what a great set of ideas. i'm definitely going to have to put that felt board into practice.
thanks!

Polly @ Pieces by Polly said...

Those are so cute!! My kids would love to decorate pillow cases like that. I'm bummed our library system doesn't have that book (I just got on to try to request it)...but maybe I'll put in a request and see if they'll purchase it. If not, we'll have to do pillowcases for another book.

Theprincessandthetot said...

Very fun! I love both the pillows and the felt board! I'm anxious to see what else you come up with when you do your robot week!

MaryAnne said...

I love those robot pillows! The felt board robot idea is fabulous, too!

Unknown said...

I LOVE it!!! What great projects!

Hope you'll be linking these up to my For the Kids Friday Link Party! Stop on by!!

:)rachel from SunScholars.blogspot.com

Cathy @ NurtureStore said...

Hello! And thanks for sharing this with our Play Academy. I love your idea for the cushions - what a lovely keepsake of the children's art.

Unknown said...

This is really great. I love, love, love the robot felt board. My kids would go wild for that.

TP Craft said...

These are SO cute!!!

Unknown said...

Thanks for sharing at the For the Kids Friday Link Party! I look forward to having you back this Friday!

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

Great projects! Thanks for joining WMCIR! The book looks intriguing, but I have a hunch that daughter will find it sad.

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