Keep your fork, there’s pie.

A few weeks ago I was at the thrift store, and picked up a little copy of Harold and the Purple Crayon. It was a huuuuuuuge hit around here. Well worth the dollar I paid for it.

So that was today’s choice for book club. Harold and the Purple Crayon, by Crockett Johnson. In case you aren’t familiar with this one, it’s about a boy named Harold. He has a purple crayon. A purple crayon and a hell of an imagination. Harold goes on all sort of adventures of his own making, drawing the story as he goes along. It’s a classic.

Our first activity today was drawing. I cut up a bunch of purple construction paper into random shapes, and the idea was we’d glue those to a sheet of paper and use them as starters for whatever kind of purple picture the kids wanted to draw around the shapes. Due to age, most of the kiddos felt more drawn to scribbling than making actual shapes, but still. Drawing’s drawing.

Then we moved on to the next drawing activity, which was just your basic “go forth and draw, kids!” except that I hung big pieces of paper onto the cabinet fronts and they had more space. Violet drew a rainstorm. Fiona (with whom we repeated the entire set of activities after school) chose to re-enact parts of the book itself. It was very involved drawing. There was falling into an ocean, and hanging on to a balloon, and being scared of a dragon. In the end, just like Harold, she drew up the covers and went to sleep.

Our last crafty-type thing was a lacing activity. I pre-cut a bunch of paper plates into crescent moons, and punched holes around the edges. Gave each kid a piece of purple yarn with a piece of packing tape wrapped around one end, and lace away, children. Fiona had zero interest in this one, but Violet really got into it, and surprisingly enough, so did Bianca.

And snack. I was really excited for the snack. In the book, Harold gets hungry, what with all the adventuring, and he decides to have a picnic. With nine different kinds of pie.

SO. We must have pie. But I wanted the kids to be able to make the snack somehow, so instead of regular pie, I baked up a bunch of little frozen mini tart shells and cut up a bunch of different fruits. And some cheese. And some cool whip. Voila. Nine kinds of pie.

Mmmmm. Pie and children’s literature. Doesn’t get much better.