Tuesday, February 26, 2019

Day 17: The Jungle Books

It's been record breaking rain around here. Like, biblical, Noah needs to build another ark kind of rain. So Pinterest and craft supplies have been the word of God lately. 

One of my kids' favorite things is Family Movie Night, and that can be anywhere between one or four nights a week, depending on sports schedules, and especially crappy weather. 

Tonight was most assuredly a Family Movie Night, but since it was pouring rain I thought about adding a craft to the fun too, because why not? We're all stuck in the house anyways.

The boys mentioned yesterday that they wanted to watch The Jungle Book, so I did a little digging on Pinterest to find a related craft. Because everything has to relate nowadays, doesn't it? Luckily my digging lasted about 5 minutes, and I found this great idea to have the kids make their own Jungle Books. 


This is a very simple project. I took construction paper (3 or 4 sheets) and stacked them, then folded them "hamburger style" into a book, and then used a single hole puncher to punch a couple holes in the spine and added ribbon (Christmas ribbon, because that's what we have) to create "binding" (solely for decoration in this case). Then I went to the dollar store and snatched a couple sheets of jungle-y themed stickers (these are mostly for Camden, since Calen is quite the little artist). 

I guided the boys a little on how to write a Jungle Book story by asking them what would happen if they were orphans living in the jungle. What would they eat? What would their house be like? What animals would adopt them?

Calen wrote a very wordy, thrilling epic about a boy named Silver Fang that was raised by wolves, attacked by a 40 foot anaconda that killed his pack and his dad, and then he went to fighting school taught by an orangutan so he could fight and kill the anaconda. He even added a little "also written by Calen Hansen" on the back as an advertisement of a story he's writing at school called "Throwing Smoke" - about a Little Leaguer becoming a star pitcher. 












Camden's book was about a boy that lived with foxes in a den and was attacked by a cobra (see a theme here?). His monkey friend "Monk" threw turtles at the cobra (like you throw shells in Mario Kart, he says) and they bounced off the cobra's head. Then they tamed it and taught it how to do tricks (by reading a book called "How To Be Respectful"), and then had a big jungle party with lemon and lime cake with coconut frosting and coconut balloons. 




The boys seriously spent at least two hours working on this project, and enjoyed it thoroughly (a Jungle Book soundtrack on my phone added to the mood too). I loved how these little books turned out. They are definitely keepsakes for life. 

We finished the night with popcorn and The Jungle Book (animated version). 


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