Today we are joined by the talented illustrator and blogger Kiki from Kiki and Company.
Hi everyone! I am thrilled to be a part of this Books Alive series — I have a special love of children’s books. I have five little munchkins of my own and from the time they were babies, I loved reading to them, all kinds of books, over and over AND over again. I love it when books teach an important lesson, and when I came across Beautiful Oops by Barney Saltzberg, I knew the message was one I wanted my kids to learn well.
The underlying theme throughout the book is it is okay to make mistakes. It’s all about how to take a mistake and make it beautiful. As an artist, I love this theme because many of the best works of art I have done are when I have been 10 hours into a project and make a “mistake.” I make myself look at it and figure out a way to incorporate it, and it has ALWAYS made my art better. As a mother and a person of faith, I LOVE this idea of looking at mistakes as a building block, not a road block.
As I expected, the kids also enjoyed looking at the sweet pages and seeing how the author took the mistakes…
… and made them awesome! (Go here for more glimpses inside this book.) So I thought it’d be fun to do the same thing — I designed a printable with four “mistakes” on it. Then as we read through the book, I let them play along.
They loved the torn one:
Here is what they made from the spill:
I thought they were so imaginative! There is one with just two dots… look how different my kids saw everything:
It was so fun to sit and doodle along with them. We talked about making mistakes and how we can make them into something beautiful.
And they ran up to me this morning asking if we could fix more mistakes! So I cut the four little rectangles out and let them doodle away. You can get your free printable by clicking on the link below:
Download the Beautiful Oops printable
Thanks for having me, Supermoms!
Come visit me at Kiki and Company where you will find more summer projects like:
DIY Frozen Elsa Dress / Summertime Activity House / Summertime Cube