Hip Hip Hurray for Eric Carle!

Eric Carle, the fabulous Childrens book illustrator/author. (the very hungry caterpillar, or "rupsje nooitgenoeg") is turning 80 on june 25th. And this was celebrated at the Eric Carle museum of picture book art in Amherst, ust 2 towns over from ours. I decided to take the kids over there since it seemed like there would be lots of fun stuff to do. And there was!


The kids had their faces painted, did a whole bunch of little art projects, they met Curious George, and (a very enormous) very hungry caterpillar outside in the Orchard. Of course, we also saw lots of beautiful Children's book illustrations, and to top it off, there was a Concert given by Elizabeth Mitchell and her family. The kids (and I, and my mom) have been huge fans of Elizabeth for years, we know all the songs by heart, and have all albums, so this was a lot of fun.


If you don't know their music yet, i suggest you'd get the albums. Its really sweet, pleasing sounding children's music, the kind that you don't get annoyed by when your kids are listening to it. The kids even had the chance to personalize the songs. When Elizabeth asked with the song "little bird" if anyone knew a bird, Robin raised her hand and said, of course, Robin! So the song went: "Robin Robin, fly through my window.." :-).

We would have stayed longer after the concert, but Quinn got really tired. We stopped by the museum shop, where Raul and Robin each picked out a stuffed caterpillar, and Quinn a caterpillar board book about food. (gee, what a surprise, a book about food..)



Oh, and purely coincidentally, when we were painting outside last Monday, Raul and Robin both decided to paint pages from "the very hungry caterpillar" so I will add the results of that to this post as well. Click here or on the pictures for pictures of our morning..