Annie and the Wild Animals

Each month I join the following amazing blogs to present the Virtual Book Club for Kids. Each month we choose a different author and each of us picks a book by that author to present with an activity, craft, etc. relating to the book. Then we ask you to join us in our blog hop with your own ideas from this author's books. The blogs participating are:

Toddler Approved - Rainy Day Mum - Adventures in Reading with Kids - 3 Dinosaurs - Royal Baloo - The Educators' Spin On It - Inspiration Laboratories - Pleasantest Thing - Edventures with Kids - Two Big Two Little - Playing With Words 365 - Kitchen Counter Chronicles - Outlaw Mom - Mommy and Me Book Club - Crafty Moms Share - No Twiddle Twaddle - The Good Long Road - Ready. Set. Read 2 Me - Reading Confetti - Mama Smiles - Juggling with Kids- Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas - Creekside Learning - Creative Family Fun - The Usual Mayhem - Teach Preschool - PlayDrMom - CraftoArt - Here Come the Girls - Being a Conscious Parent - Smiling like Sunshine - Crayon Freckles - Train Up a Child - Smile Play Learn

This month the author is the amazing Jan Brett. Not only are her books fun to read with great stories and some classics, but she also does beautiful illustrations! Jan Brett also has a page full of ideas to go along with her books.This month we decided to focus on one of our favorites by her, Annie and the Wild Animals.

Annie and the Wild Animals is about a girl, Annie who lives with her cat, Taffy. It has been a long winter with a lot of snow and Taffy has been acting strange. One day Annie cannot find Taffy anywhere. She gets lonely so she decides to make corn cakes and leave them for a wild animal which she hopes she will be able to tame to be her new pet. Of course she gets more wild animals than she wants and none are small friendly animals. She keeps making corn cakes until she runs out of corn meal. Then finally spring comes and Taffy returns with three surprises.

We decided to try to make corn cakes. When I first googled corn cake recipes I mostly found corn pancakes, so we started with those. We adapted a recipe from Smitten Kitchen.

We used about two tablespoons of margarine and cooked frozen corn kernels in a pan. Then we used non-fat milk, egg, corn and the vanilla and mixed them. In a separate bowl we measured and mixed the dry ingredients using whole wheat flour. Then poured the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and then cooked the pancakes. Hazel did a lot of the measuring herself and helped at the stove.

Then we also made Annie's Favorite Corn Cake Recipe from Jan Brett's site, which is more like a corn bread. We had this with some beef stew at dinner.

Then we also did a craft project. I enlarged some of the border pictures of the wild animals and Annie, and Taffy and her kittens. We made them into a mobile by gluing them onto some cardstock and stringing them. On the wild animals we wrote the things Annie thought about each (the moose was too big, etc.).

Now you can check out each of the other ideas to go with a Jan Brett book as well as add your own to our blog hop!