Eric Carle Museum book festival

For the 2nd year of what we hope will be many, we went to the annual book festival at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, MA. This year's theme was from his new book, What's Your Favorite Animal, which is a collaboration with a number of children's illustrators and authors. We were given copies of the book as we entered the museum as a gift, and it's a fun book. The activities around the museum were to make your own animal ear headband, learning about and visiting therapy dogs, making a "house" for your stuffed animal, and a scavenger hunt outside.

There was even a class from a local environmental center where we learned about snakes and turtles native to New England - the girls even touched them! Posy was super brave and touched the snake (named Maizy) and the turtle's shell (the turtle was named Speedy).

In the museum lobby with Aunt T, who is staying with us for the month, and their stuffed animals which they brought along for the Favorite Animal theme.

Posy pet one of the dogs we visited, a labradoodle. This particular dog was on Broadway in the play "Annie."

Magnolia and Birdie coloring the outsides of their animal houses.

Sunny decorating her animal house for her squirrel Blossom - she was the only one who made the ears.

And a fun gratuitous shot of Azalea playing outside while we had lunch, because she's cute.

To go along with the book festival, we had Eric Carle Week at home and read Eric Carle books every day for the week. The favorite at our house is The Mixed Up Chameleon. We also made our own Very Animals:

The Very Cuddly Bear
The Very Sleepy Duck
The Very Tiny Hippo
The Very Naughty Elephant

and on and on. The list was really hilarious. Aunt T and Sunny sat at the table for literally hours and made collage art similar to Eric Carle's of their "book titles". Eric Carle paints tissue paper and then cuts it to the sizes and shapes he needs for his illustrations - we just used regular colored paper because we didn't have the right type of paint for the tissue paper. Next time, we'll be better prepared.