You may or may not know that before staying home with Turner I was a teacher. For 5 of those years of teaching I taught Fine Arts: Art, Music, Drama to Kindergarten through 5th graders. I absolutely loved it and it was something I was passionate about. One thing I always tried to do when teaching an art lesson was pair it with a piece of children’s literature. My mom discovered a Barney Saltzburg book called “Arlo Needs Glasses” quite a few years back and I started using it with one of my art lessons. This led me to purchasing some of his other books like “A Little Bit of Oomph” and “Beautiful Oops!” and incorporating them into my lessons in the classroom. 5th graders usually do not care much for read aloud but they would beg me to reread these books to them because of all the cool elements! I was recently gifted another copy of “Beautiful Oops!” from Workman Publishing (@workmanpub) and have been reading it to Turner. He is just beginning to be able to really see and recognize colors and shapes and he was mesmerized by the illustrations!
A cool feature of the book is that it has pop-outs, flaps to life, overlays and more! It really gets your attention and keeps it on each page. Even though Turner is only two months old literacy is something that is not only important to me as a former teacher but also now as his mom. I love stories that have a positive message and lesson behind them. Beautiful Oops! is all about taking mistakes and making them into something else thats positive. I love the creativity behind each mistake it uses as an example and how it really encourages readers to think outside the box.
I have seen first hand in the art room how hard kids can be on themselves when something does not turn out as they have visualized. I always tried to take those instances as an opportunity to teach about being gentle with ourselves and making their “mistake” into something else! We always also talked about not being perfect because no one is. Today, with social media and our constant need for our self image to look a certain way it is more important than ever to teach children to learn from mistakes and use them to create something positive. Want to get a copy of this book for your own children or classroom? “Beautiful Oops!” is on sale wherever books are sold. #beautifuloops #beautifuloopsbook
Love,
Megan
