The Wild West

Yeehah- it's time to saddle up!

This month, the theme over at Poppins Book Nook is The Wild West.

Living outside of America, we only see the Wild West on television or read about it through books. One of Lucas' favourite stories is "Let's Sing a Lullaby with the Brave Cowboy", mostly because he gets to shriek like this:

This is a book I enjoy reading, as it has a funny storyline and the lullaby is a sweet ditty to sing to the boys at night. The main feature of this book was the cows that helped the cowboy to be brave, and with a twist at the end of the story, this tale is a feel-good read for all ages.

When we talked about the Wild West, my four year old knew about cowboys and cacti. He also mentioned the Wild West scene in the Lego movie!

The first thing we did was some painting using homemade non-toxic puffy paint.



To make the puffy paint, you will need
1/4 cup flour for each colour
water
food colouring
rice bran oil

Whisk the four ingredients together and get ready to paint! This goes puffy as it dries, so it is meant to be a thick, gloopy paint. If it is too thin, add more flour.

We painted a cactus scene printed from the internet, and the boys had great fun colouring the different pictures.



When the paint dries, it becomes puffy!



We also practiced our threading skills by making a cactus out of pipe cleaners and dyed pasta.



To dye the pasta, I simply put 1/2 cup penne pasta in a ziploc bag with 3 teaspoons of green food colouring and 5 teaspoons of white vinegar. After an hour I drained the pasta and spread it out on a plate to dry.

Lucas and Adam wanted to be cowboys themselves, and we talked about the wanted posters we have seen on the Lego Movie in the Wild West Scene and when Bad Cop is searching for Emmett. It was a fun afternoon activity to make our own wanted posters!

Soak some teabags in hot water for an hour, then add some white paper with a sepia photo printed onto it.



The boys discovered their Cowboy names through the Cowboy Name Generator to put on the Wanted posters. The "Wanted" was stamped using one of my stamp sets.



Lucas was Gummy Chuck Huggles! WANTED fer bitin' a bull dog and shavin' a horse.

Adam was Roper "Snuggle Bug" Sweetwater! WANTED fer plain not picking up after himself. (That sounds about right actually!)

The boys got a chuckle out of this, and we put their names and crimes on the posters.

Lunch time had to have a Cowboy theme, and so we had Cowboy Empanadas (bread with a ham and cheese filling), sherriff stars made from ham, some apple slices, Cowboy Crunch (dried cranberries and Cheerios mixed together) and a drink of milk with a cow straw.



Lastly, we had so much fun playing Pin The Moustache on the Cowboy! This was a great game for spatial awereness, taking turns and hand/eye coordination. I purchased this game but you could easily make your own.



We had a lot of fun learning about cacti, cowboys and colours this month with Poppins Book Nook!

Clip art by MelonHeadz.

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