Monday, April 6, 2009

Holy Week Book Activity -- all you need is a pencil and paper


In order to get the four year old twins participating in some school work that will also interest the older children, I have been doing a picture book of the week accompanied by a drawing activity.



This week, we are reading The Easter Story by Brian Wildsmith. This story is a beautifully illustrated retelling of the Passion and uses the perspective of the donkey Jesus rides into Jerusalem. I like the donkey "angle" because we use our donkey figure when we talk about the Nativity as well, the donkey who carries Mary to Bethlehem. I have heard it said that when St. Josemaria Escriva would meditate on a gospel passage he would often picture himself as a humble donkey watching nearby, or working and helping the Holy Family.

To accompany the book, I found these instructions on how to draw a donkey, and we have been practicing this morning. I think I will continue to use this website for other book related drawing times. I really like the simple step by step approach, and later in the week we can try to draw donkeys from memory, to see what we have learned.

5 comments:

Right Said Red said...

Thanks for these great suggestions. I wish you had posted this book a couple of weeks back. I wonder if they carry it at Borders, as it is too late to purchase online....

The drawing instructions are great!

B-Mama said...

I am looking for some simple ways to encourage proper pencil-holding in my little ones. An OT friend offered the advice of using the child chopsticks sold at Sur Le Table to develop hand strength. Anyone out there have other suggestions for encouraging proper crayon/pencil grasp? I can't wait for my tikes to get to the level of picture-drawing. This looks like a great activity.

MJDMom said...

The Montessorians recommend having a child use toothpicks and try to put them in the holes of a salt shaker! It is somewhat difficult to find small enough toothpicks and large enough salt shakers.....but FYI!!

Stephanie said...

An OT friend of mine said to break crayons in half...forces a tripod grasp. Or, have your child hold a cotton ball on their ring and pinky finger of the writing hand, same result.

Kate E. said...

Also faber-castel sells triangle grip colored pencils and crayons that have helped us early one with better grip. And they are nice and not expensive!