Harold and the Purple Crayon: A Dry Erase Activity

Draw Your Own Adventure Dry Erase Activity | Mama Papa Bubba

Now that we’ve been back in Kuwait for almost a week and the worst of our jet lag seems to be over with, Miss G and I have been enjoying getting back into our regular routine.  Our days have been filled with fun outings, play dates with friends, and fun activities at home – including our first instalment of our second round of our awesome little preschool book club with some of our online friends!  

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This week’s book, Harold and the Purple Crayon, is a classic, though not one I’ve read to Miss G before {which made it extra fun}.  It’s a tale of little Harold, a boy who goes out for a walk in the moonlight one evening, armed only with a large purple crayon.  As he walks along the blank white pages of the book, he creates his own adventure by drawing imaginative landscapes full of excitement before eventually drawing himself a bed and drifting off to sleep for the night – cute, right?  Because Gracen has been very into storytelling and creating her own books lately, I knew exactly what we’d do for this book activity – a draw your own adventure dry erase activity that would allow Grae to let her imagination take the lead.

Harold and the Purple Crayon Photo Shoot

After reading the story together, we retrieved our purple Crayola dry erase crayon {we absolutely love these} and found a blank wall to snap a few Harold-esque photos of Miss G.  If I’m being honest, this part was actually much more challenging than I anticipated.  Grae naturally wanted to be in constant motion {she was busy drawing a pretend mural after all} and most of the time she had her back towards me with the crayon directly in front of her body, which meant it wasn’t visible in the photos.  What did help though, was having her choose a page in Harold and the Purple Crayon to copycat.  As soon as we started that, getting a few good photos was fairly easy.  Because Brad is very tech savvy and I knew that he’d have no problem PhotoShopping Grae’s body onto a large white background, I took the photos fairly close up…

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But if I were to have to do it on my own, I would have taken my photos like this one – with lots of background. Then I would have probably haphazardly attempted to get rid of the electrical outlet, phone, and thermostat {which would have undoubtedly been a bit of a mess}.

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Thankfully, I didn’t have to do that.  The images that Brad created turned out perfectly and all I had to do was print them off and laminate them.  {We’re lucky enough to have a laminator here at home, but before we did, I often used self-laminating pouches, which work surprisingly well and are really easy to use.}

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Then I set out this little invitation to create.

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Without hesitation, Miss G got started.

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First, she wanted to recreate a scene Harold had come up with – her with her very own apple tree.

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But then some clouds came along and it started to rain.  Which was, of course, great for her tree.

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On the next dry erase page, she created some friends – one of whom was named Bader – hah!

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Then, she went for a visit to the ocean where the wind picked up and created waves almost as big as her – yikes!

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Of course, all of this adventuring made her hungry, so she decided to create a pie picnic just like Harold’s.

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The best part was that when she’d completed her first set of adventures, she easily erased them and started on the second round.

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Round two involved some house building, some apartment building, and some gardening, among other things…

IMG 2624And even I got invited to join in the fun. ☺

Since first trying this activity, our Harold and the Purple Crayon book, plus our dry erase sheets and purple crayon have remained out at Grae’s crafting table, and I’m guessing they’ll remain there for quite a while longer as she’s got all kinds of new adventure ideas brewing.

 

Ready for some other really fun Harold and the Purple Crayon inspired activities?  Check out what our friends came up with:

 

Harold Book Club

giant crayon mural  |  lavender crayon soaps  |  purple yarn art  |  crayon play dough  |  harold’s purple crayon

Want to try a little preschool book club of your own?  See the entire series here.

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7 thoughts on “Harold and the Purple Crayon: A Dry Erase Activity

  1. What a fantastic idea! I love this! For those of us ‘non tech savy’ can always cut and paste the photo – then laminate.

    This would be SO much fun on a road trip or airline flight! LOVE!! I will link this wonderful idea on my website http://www.theeducationaltourist.com where I write about traveling with the kids and making the adventures magical. I would love a shout out from you!

    Thanks for the wonderful idea!
    Natalie, The Educational Tourist

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