I’ve gotten away from posting about grab-and-go kits, and that’s a shame because they’re such fun to work on. This week’s kits are thanks to my library’s programming group, making sure I’ve got supplies to play with.
The Teen/Middle School kit is inspired by artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and Maya Angelou’s poem, Life Doesn’t Frighten Me, illustrated by Basquiat. The activity challenges readers to come up with their own book covers, with Basquiat’s art as a guide; kits have a pamphlet with ideas on how to create a Basquiat-like book cover, a brief bio on the artist, and links to more info. For the kit, I doubled up on supplies to give teens/tweens two covers (I don’t have a bustling teen area, so I created less kits). Each kit contains two sheets of art paper; a sheet of tissue paper; a glue stick, and 2 pastel sticks. I printed out a Basquiat crown on yellow cardstock and stuck them on each of the bags. I’m pretty happy with how they turned out.
Today, I put together a craft kit inspired by Lola Plants a Garden, by Anna McQuinn. This one is for the little ones, and is an imaginative craft. The pieces are conceptual: there are 2 flat dowels, 5 cardboard geometric shapes, 4 clothespins, and 4 triangular paper cups. The instruction sheet includes HOT (Higher Order Thinking) questions and invites kids and families to use the pieces to create something that will help them plant or grow something. I took it in a slightly different direction, coloring in shapes, using the clothespin to attach them to the cups, so it looks like they’d put that out to identify what plants they’re growing. The dowels let them illustrate how they would scoop the dirt and plant their seeds. There are no wrong answers here; just creative thinking and hands-on imaginative play. I also included a little booklist of gardening books, fiction and non-fiction, English and Spanish, and I put a printout of the book’s cover on the bag.
We’re working on more grab-and-go kits, so I’ll keep them coming here. If you’ve got good ones to share, please do!
Mom Read It 