This is one of my kids favorite school books.  I bought it when Leo was just four years old.  We started learning about different animals using some “Animal Encyclopedias” and “Amazing Facts About Animals” books.  Once a week we would pull out this Cut and Create book and do a little craft project to go along with our lesson.

The book is great for teaching pre-schoolers how to cut and paste simple shapes as well as how to follow visual step by step instructions.

This book is also really helpful for parents because it gives you the templates for all the pieces you’ll need to make each animal.  I’ve never actually traced any of the templates.  I just always copy the pictures as closely as I can onto different colors of construction paper and then let the kids cut them out and glue them together.

The book is full of all kinds of really cute animals.  You can just put them together as a craft to hang on the fridge, but some of them like this one, make really great masks and the kids love to put them on and act like the animals they are learning about.

This camel makes a great puppet for Old Testament Bible stories if you glue him to a Popsicle stick.

Check out this adorable octopus.

I just love octopuses.

Whenever I see an octopus at an aquarium the rest of my family has to drag me away.  I could just watch these guys all day.  They are so fascinating.

Did you know that octopuses are super intelligent?  They can learn to traverse through underwater mazes, unscrew jar lids with their tentacles to get to food, and even possibly distinguish between shapes and colors.

Octopuses have been known to sneak out of their habitats into neighboring ones in search of food and I have even heard stories about owners who have found them climbing up bookshelves with their suction cups.

Octopuses have no bones at all and can squeeze through openings the size of their eyeballs.  I read one story about an owner who found his large octopus curled up hiding inside a teapot.

I could go on and on about octopuses. They are so amazing!!!

There is also a page in this Cut and Create book that shows you some additional items you can make to create a habitat for your paper animals like flowers, trees, leaves, food, rocks, and coral.

This little tree frog looks so cute perched on a big leaf.

Recently Remy has been quite taken with the Big Bad Wolf.  She is a fan of his work in both the tale of the Three Little Pigs and Little Red Riding Hood.  As she flipped through the book this past week looking for which animal she would most like to make, she of course chose this one.

Remy wanted to make the Big Bad Wolf but she wasn’t in the mood to do any cutting on this particular day so Leo volunteered.  Even though he is now in third grade, Leo also still loves making animals from this book… I’ll admit it… I like it too.  It’s just fun.

We took the liberty of adding some fangs and scary eyebrows to make sure he wasn’t just a Zoo Wolf, but rather a Big… Bad… Wolf!  I also cut some slits in the eyes to see through and poked holes in either side to hold knots in ribbon so it could be worn as a mask.  Once Leo and I finished this mask for Remy, Leo decided he needed a mask too so they could play in their masks together.

This is one of the things I love about home schooling my kids.  It’s so awesome to watch brothers and sisters spend time with each other playing and growing together every day instead of being separated from each other for the majority of their weeks into their own age groups.

Of course they both still need time with their peers which they get through Sunday school, Awanas, enrichment classes, and team sports, but I love that the majority of their time each day is spent together as siblings.  My husband and I are hoping this experience will continue to foster a very close bond between all of our children.

So, we decided that the appropriate animal to create to go along with the Big Bad Wolf would of course be a Little Pig.  But this is a zoo book and it didn’t have any pigs, so Mommy had to put her illustration skills to work and create a Little Pig from scratch.

Here he is… our forlorn Little Piggy.

Isn’t it amazing what two strips of black paper used as eyebrows can express if placed at just the right angle?  He sure looks worried…. as he should.  There is a Big Bad Wolf coming his way!

Once you’ve used this book a bit and get the hang of putting these animals together regularly you really can start to create all kinds of your own masks, puppets, and craft projects from lessons and stories.

Cut and Create books come in several different themes and are great tools to inspire quick and easy crafts.

You may think it’s just the pig mask, but under that paper Remy’s face looks just about the same.  She threw a fit when I tried to get her to be the pig for this picture because I guess we made the Big Bad Wolf just a little bit too Big and Bad for her comfort.  She didn’t mind being the Big Bad Wolf herself, but she did not like seeing that mask on her big brother.

And I just paid how much for costumes from Wal-Mart this past week?  I could have used these free masks and been the hit of our Church Harvest Festival.

If you’re interested in having some inexpensive, educational fun with your little ones, check out all these awesome Cut and Create books…