Story Stretchers: Only One You

Our friends got this book for Will for Christmas 2009:

It's about a little fish named Adri, whose mama and papa share some words of wisdom with him as he goes about exploring the world. Things like:

"Know when to speak; know when to listen."

"Blend in when you need to. Stand out when you have the chance."

"Set aside some quiet time to relax and reflect. Every day."

Mama finishes with: "There's only one you in this great big world. Make it a better place."

And on the inside front and back covers, there are a whole bunch more well-said words of wisdom that aren't in the text.
It's a really sweet book and the illustrations showcase the author's "rockfish" - so cool - which you can get a glimpse of on the cover above.

I loved the message and felt like I saw something new in the pictures each time we read it. It wasn't till a month or so after owning it that I cued in on the book jacket message. The author, Linda Kranz, is also the author of a craft book called "Let's Rock: Rock Painting for Kids". After that, I realized that all those fish in the illustrations were actually painted rocks. I mean, you can tell they're shaped like rocks right away, but I didn't really get that that was a craft and passion of the author's all on it's own. So neat. I immediately wanted to get into rock painting with the kids. I searched Amazon for Linda's rock painting book and ordered it:

I also found this one that looked like it had some really cool ideas and included some paint as well:

I put both of these books in Will's Easter basket last year and promptly forgot about them when I realized (after the fact) that he was just a little too young to be ready for this.

Fast forward to last summer (Aug 2010) when my issue of Family Fun arrived in the mail. They had a suggestion for painted rock turtles that looked super easy and cute. At the kids' current ages, it's helpful to have activities where they can independently do something and have it look as much like the prototype as possible. Obviously we didn't do this craft right away, but I filed it in mind as something to try sometime.

So at the beginning of this month, we collected rocks from outside and I got them set up to paint them. Oops - not sure why that white paint is out... I exchanged it for brown before we started.

Sophie did the green on her own and then I helped her make little brown spots on the "shell".

Will covered the whole thing in green...

...and then completely in brown. We ended up letting his dry and adding green spots later. :)

While they dried for... um... several days... okay, a week, we read a book on rocks by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace (scientific but not too advanced):

And a frog book by Leo Lionni about frogs that can't learn to share:

Then when I finally got up the courage to try my new glue gun from Hobby Lobby (which I picked up for like three bucks), I cut and hot glued some painted, wood, craft sticks on the underside of the rocks to look like arms, legs, head and tail. And finally, I added some googly eyes for cuteness like the picture shows. P.S. Glue guns are awesome!! I'd never used one before. Hmm... what else can I hot glue?

Aren't they cute?

Will's been looking through the rock painting books and picking out ones he thinks look cool that we're going to try sometime. The pirate one he likes looks a little complicated, but these animal print ones seem super easy! :)

You should look for this book (Only One You by Linda Kranz) and read it several times, including inside the covers. It will inspire you.