Tiptoes Lightly Story Eggs

Yippee skipee!  I am so excited about these story eggs I can't wait to show them to you!  And these few are only the beginning of the project!  I think I may end up with a whole fleet of them by the time I am finished!

My inspiration came from Mamaroots and her story eggs.  They are amazing!  They are visually beautiful and surely very smooth and wonderful to touch.  Additionally they aid in her children's language development by encouraging them to retell their favorite stories.  My guess is that they also encourage the children to act out favorite parts of the story which would lead to deeper understanding of the parts of the story, character development, and much more!

With learning like that, how could I not want to make some story eggs of my own!

I decided to use a lovely Easter story about one of our family's favorite characters, Tiptoes Lightly!  The story is called The Starry Bird.  I am planning on beginning this story with my class this coming week, so I thought eggs with pictures of bits of the story would go along perfectly with our reading.  The children will be able to order the eggs to match parts of the story, identify characters on the eggs, act out the scenes portrayed on the eggs, retell the story themselves . . .

And who knows what other great ideas my students will come up with.  Whatever they are, I'm sure they will be fantastic!

I used some of the author Reg Down's illustrations from the book, and redrew them onto the wooden eggs using my wood burner and watercolor paints.  Then I used beeswax polish to seal up the wood.  The polish makes the wood almost glow and feel so smooth.  I love it!

Here are the eggs I have finished so far.

This is Tiptoes' little acorns house, described at the beginning of the story.

Tiptoes is soon visited by a very excited Jeremy Mouse, who tells her he has seen a huge egg, "this big!"

Tiptoes and Jeremy Mouse venture into the tall grass and find the egg.  It is very, very big!

Soon the little gnomes Pine Cone and Pepper Pot get involved. 

And another character, Farmer John, joins the story. 

Those are all the eggs I have completed so far, but I'll keep working and post again when I have more.  In the meantime, you may want to pick up your own copy of The Starry Bird.  It is delightful!

Oh and readers, I need your help!  You probably noticed each egg sits in its own little egg cup.  I polished one without painting it, and I liked that look.  I painted these egg cups (in the picture below) with blue and green watercolors.  Now I'm not sure which I like better.  Hence in the picture above 4 out of 5 cups are just bare, waiting for me to make up my mind.  Hmmmmm.  Which do you prefer?

  

Thank you for your ideas, and I hope you all have a lovely weekend!