Book and Art: Charlie goes to school

We did a fun book and art project recently, and the book is just so cute!  I found out that "pioneer woman" aka Ree Drummond has made some picture books featuring Charlie the ranch dog.  I hadn't read any of them, but really wanted to see what they were like.  Well, fast forward to just a few weeks ago when I was looking on scholastic book orders and they had it for only $4.  I decided to go ahead and get it because I knew it was about homeschooling, and I knew my kids would love a book about a dog going to school at home.  I knew I wanted to add it to our collection.


This book did not disappoint!  My kids have loved it, and we bought the CD bundle so they have listened to it over and over again.  Since we did this craft we also found a few more copies of Charlie at the library.  I spotted Charlie the Ranch Dog, and Charlie and the Christmas Kitty, so we brought those home to enjoy too.  So, it has been a week of reading all about Charlie!  All the stories are fun and have some great pictures of loveable animals.

For a craft to go along with this book I thought it would be fun to re-create Charlie.  I found these great printable stand-up hound dog puppets to paint at Danielle's place.  They fit perfectly with our story, but you do have to have a subscription to use the printable.  A great place to have a subscription though!

We started out by painting with brown, black, and white paint.

I had the book open to a page so the boys could see Charlie's coloring.

They turned out pretty cute, but I had to redraw the eyes and face details with a sharpie because everything was painted over.

Alex's (age 3) dog.

Aric's (age 6) doggy.

Mommy's doggy.  I couldn't resist doing one too!

We just loved this book, and I'm looking forward to reading the whole collection. 

Desiree