Author Fiesta

Animal Tracks

The Jim Arnosky Author Fiesta is still going strong around the Ten Kids and a Dog home.

Joann says:

One of the kids favorite books by Jim Arnosky has been Wild Tracks! This contains beautiful Arnosky animal illustrations along with life size illustrations of mostly North American animal tracks,tracks that can be found out and about right here in our neck of the woods.

After enjoying perusing this book for a few weeks, the time came to start some projects.

Here is a sampling of the great activities they have been doing that focus on animal tracks.

Check out the entire post here.

Cute Crinkleroot Caps

(Make sure to check out the Crinkleroot hat post compiled by Joann over at Ten Kids and a Dog. A portion of which is being reprinted here with her permission. Aren't they just too cute for words!)

Keeping in the Jim Arnosky nature theme, and wanting to honor our favorite nature guide, Crinkleroot, I made the four littlest kids "hiking hats". We plan to use them on all of our nature walks, especially this autumn, as we continue enjoying the Author Fiesta.

The kids are really enjoying their hats. I used Simplicity #5540 as my pattern. I think they only cost about $3.00 each to make.

Crinkleroot, Your Nature Companion

Taking the Crinkleroot Guide concept one step further and also borrowing an idea from Flat Stanley, the famous paper traveler, how about having a paper Crinkleroot accompany your family on this month's nature adventures.

We printed an image from the internet (I wanted it bigger but it lost clarity as I enlarged). You could also enlarge a copy from one of the books. Cut it out (we put a construction paper backing on it to make it sturdier and added a popsicle stick handle) and he's ready to go along on nature walks and assist with the studies.  Here's where he went with us today.

Here's one printable image of Crinkleroot: http://jimarnosky.com/factpage.html

Joann's contribution: Crinkleroot w/ an added idea for older children

September's Author/Illustrator

...is Jim Arnosky. 

His birthday was September 1st.

Let's hang on to that last bit of summer stretching into fall.  It's a great time for some nature study in our Author Fiesta.

Jim Arnosky is a self taught writer, artist, and naturalist.  He is a prolific author and illustrator, with well over a 130 books to his credit.  His outstanding work has received many honors and awards including the Christopher Medal, Orbis Pictus Honor, ALA Gordon Award, and Outstanding Science book awards from National Science Teachers Associations.

We  hope you will join us this month as we hone our naturalist skills and knowledge and share Jim's passion for nature through the books he has written and illustrated.

A great place to start is Jim Arnosky's website, which is full of nature facts, coloring pages, and book lists.