October Virtual Book Club - Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

For our October Virtual Book Club with 





we read Amy Krouse Rosenthal's book 

Duck Rabbit! 

This is a children's book that plays with the idea that shapes can be ambiguous. An early 20th Century psychologist, Jastrow, invented the figure that looks like the head of a duck and/or the head of a rabbit (the duck's beak being the rabbit's ears). The story by Amy Krouse Rosenthal is based on this charachter with the illustration of Tom Lichtenheld.

This amusing story looks at what happens when two different people look at something from different perspectives and come up with conflicting views as to what they see. In this case, the question is, “Is it a duck or a rabbit?” The reader will have to decide.

Jastrow duck-rabbit illusion

Tom Lichtenhen illustration

With this book K and L observed  a cute way to present the idea that differing views of the world can all be equally valid - an important idea for kids to grasp in this increasingly polarized world. It also teaches kids to use their imaginations to see beyond the obvious. As the "argument" is quite playful I hope I will be able to use it as a lesson with K and L when an argument arises.That is we all have a different perspective and there is no need to make an argument on different opinions.

Visit this link for an Online version of the book

After reading the book I found some 

other Optical Illusions on-line to show to the children. Here are just a few of our favourite ones.

We discussed the 3 main types of optical illusions with examples.

Reverse Illusion

You can see the picture as one thing or something else .....

Duck or Rabbit?

Old couple or mexican scene?

Wineglass or faces?

Young girl or old lady?

Moving Illusion

It seems like the picture is moving but it isn't ....

Mind Illusion

You think that something that is there is not there, or something is not there but you think it is there ...

Try to count the black spots

If you stare at the blinking pink dots, you will see only one color, pink. If you look at the the +in the center, you'll see a circle of pink dots and a rotating green dot.
Now, stare at the + without moving your eyes.

Duck Rabbit Craft

K and L created a duck rabbit craft and acted out the book between them.

Follow this Blog hop for more activities related to Amy Krouse Rosenthal books.

September Virtual Book Club - Lois Ehlert

When September's author Lois Ehlert was announced for the Virtual Book Club at Toddler Approved I searched for her books on-line and was so pleased that most of her books have to do with nature.We watched this interesting clip on you tube about Lois Ehlert which made us more familiar with her work. Our family loves anything that has to do with nature and we try to introduce it in different ways to K and L. It happened that this Summer we had planted some herbs in some pots on our roof garden  to see the process of their growth from seed to edible food. It was K who planted the seeds and cared for them during the hot summer days. So after reading several books by Lois Ehlert we focused on Growing Vegetable Soup as it was so related to what we were actually doing.

This book focuses about vegetable gardening, the planting, weeding, harvesting, washing, chopping and cooking. Since we were in the peak of our hot summer days instead of soup we used our home grown basil to make into pesto.The photos show the process we used to make our home made pesto

Home grown organic herbs ... marjoram,rosemary, thyme, mint, sage  and basil

Collecting leaves 

... more leaves

Ingredients ready for preparing pesto

All set to start process

.. mince the basil

.. all ingredients blended

.. homemade pesto

..pasta with home made pesto

.... ready to eat!!!

Researching about Lois Ehlert we learnt that she has a very creative book creation proess. She begins with a "dummy book"made from pencil drawings. Then assesses to determing the subject matter of the new book. Once she has a topic, she will do background research to learn more. Then she will begin her artwork, which involves cutting out each piece individually and then gluing them on the pages of her book.


For some craft we used her technique of colourful cut-paper-style illustrations to create wonderful pictures related to the book. K and L used various craft material to create their pictures.

L testing textures to create a picture

K decided to do a picture of the pesto pasta

Penne with Pesto craft version

Collage of the Basil plant 

Basil plant

List of materials used for craft 

K enjoys writing and she also wished to write the recipe for the pesto. So I wrote words for her and she chose what to include in the recipe.

We are so interested in Louis Ehlert books and would love to know more of her books trough  the blog hop  featuring  her differtent books.  If  you are interested follow this blog hop too.