Theme School: Princess and Pink

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We started school off with a favorite topic this year:  princesses.  And pink!

Our theme book was Pinkalicious by Victoria Kann & Elizabeth Kann.  Definitely a favorite in our house – just a fun pink story.  A little girl who LOVES pink eats too many pink cupcakes and turns pink, then red.  The cure, as recommended by the doctor, is to avoid pink food and eat green food.  (By the way, I would avoid Goldilicious by the same author; that was a disappointment for me because of the “magic” content.  There are also a few princess books we excluded in this post because I didn’t like the feminist anti-marriage message in them.)

Thanks to Itty-Bitty Bookworm for most of the book theme ideas and printables.

Let’s start with our book list.  First the books related to color change:

• A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon.  A big favorite of Esmé’s with a non-conformist message of being true to oneself.
• Purple, Green and Yellow by Robert Munsch.  Another fun story about a child who changes colors.

Now the princess books!

• I Am Really A Princess by Carol Diggory Shields.  Mom’s favorite.  I could see Esmé on every one of these pages!
• My Princess Bible by Andy Holmes.  We’ll be doing a review of this book this week – a great addition to our theme!
• The Princess Twins and the Birthday Party by Mona Hodgson.  Nothing better than princesses and parties in the same book, as far as Esmé is concerned!  I love the message of the heart…
• The Apple-Pip Princess by Jane Ray.  Loved the point of this book – the best princess is the one who cares for her people above herself.
• The Princess and the Three Knights by Karen Kingsbury.  A Christian take on the princess story and true love.
• The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch.  Definite favorite of Esmé – and Mom loves the principle that dress isn’t what matters…  We also watched the video of this story, which I didn’t like as much.
• The Brave Little Seamstress by Mary Pope Osborne.  A classic story.
• The Princess’s Secret Letters by Hilary Robinson.  Shows how princesses have more in common with us common folk than you’d think.
• Cinder Edna by Ellen Jackson.  Great for those who don’t like Cinderella so much.  Not so great for big Cinderella fans like Esmé, who just didn’t GET the point of the story.
• Not All Princesses Dress in Pink by Jane Yolen.  There’s more to life than pink, you know…
• Princesses Are Not Perfect by Kate Lum.  Each of us has our talents, and we shouldn’t try to be all things to all people, princess or no.
• Snow Princess by Susan Paradis.  A sweet daddy-daughter winter story.
• Esther, the Very Brave Queen by Sunny Griffin.  Toddler story about a biblical queen.

And just some girlie books…

• Tea for Ruby by Sarah Ferguson.  A long-time favorite about how one should behave in front of the queen.
• Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman.  Sweet book about living life to the fullest, regardless of racial or gender challenges.  A winner for both mom and Esmé!
• The Pink Party by Maryann Macdonald.  Esmé could definitely relate to this one as a lover of all things pink – it was a favorite of hers and has a current-day message of friendship.
• Fancy Nancy books by Jane O’Connor – we loved them all! Vocabulary lessons were a definite plus.  Here are the ones we found:
• -Fancy Nancy’s Favorite Fancy Words: From Accessories to Zany
• -Fancy Nancy: Every Day is Earth Day
• -Fancy Nancy Sees Stars
• -Fancy Nancy at the Museum
• -Fancy Nancy: Pajama Day
• -Fancy Nancy and the Posh Puppy

Moving on to activities…

Of course, we had to make pinkalicious cupcakes!  Preparing the pan:
 

Making the white cake mix pink with a little red food coloring:
 

The best part:  slathering the cupcakes with pink icing:


The finished product…  Sad to say (or maybe good, since none of us turned pink) – we didn’t make it through most of the cake and ended throwing out a lot of it.
 

Moving on…  We did a lot with the color pink.  Like pink thumbprint bugs…
 

…which morphed into entire pink handprints.



We filled a jar with pink pom poms, and then took turns rolling dice and removing the corresponding number of pompoms from the jar until it was empty.  Esmé counted up the final quantity we each had, and she was by far the winner!
 

Esmé mixed red and white paint to create a BIG pink flower.


She marked (with flat glass marbles) the objects “that don’t belong” on cards made using many items from the theme book.


She did a survey in our house as to who preferred green versus pink.  Green was the winner!


I brought out a bunch of cupcake printables from www.childcareland.com, such as this cupcake puzzle:


And this tracing cupcake (which impresses me because Esmé doesn’t often FINISH her coloring projects.  And her tracing has been improving significantly over the last couple of months.)
 

And this “circle all the numbers” cupcake


And this cutting-practice sheet.  Which was a little too simple, so she started cutting out each of the itty-bitty cupcakes, too.  Right on the lines.  Separating the liners from the tops.


We had to do some drama play!  One of Esmé’s dolls mysteriously turned up pink.  Fortunately, it wasn’t a case of pinkititis, but merely markers, which washed off fine in the bath.


We put a masking tape cross on a piece of cardstock, and then Esmé painted the cardstock black.  The masking tape came off afterwards to leave a white cross.  We folded the cardstock in half, stapling the two sides to make a doctor’s bag with a pipe cleaner handle.  Then we filled it up with goodies like alcohol swabs, bandaids, and cotton balls.  So Esmé could make house calls on little children who had turned different colors.
 

Dr. Esmé is in the house…  She worked on stuffed green Frog (aka Princess Fiona) quite a lot, because Frog kept dying on us.
 

We washed and painted some pennies – green on one side and pink on the other.  Then we tossed them and used Do-a-Dot markers to track whether they landed green- or pink-side up.  It came out just about 50-50, as expected, though Esmé got far more of the pink ones and I got far more of the green ones for some reason…


Esmé painted a watermelon using pink and green watercolors (with black paint for seeds).


Esme matched up beginning letters to pink objects.


And she took uncolored objects and determined if they were generally pink, green, or any color.  (Didn’t ‘cha know umbrellas and fish should ALWAYS be pink?!)
 

We made some pink and green food collages using pictures from old magazines.  Interesting how there was no junk food to be found on the green collage.


And here’s an easy-reader book entirely illustrated by PONY, aka Esmé.