The Princess and the Pony Book Activities {& Free Printable!}

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My bloggy pal Hilary over at Raising Fairies and Knights started a fun new Monthly Crafting Book Club this year - a challenge to create activities to go along with some of the most beloved children's books out there.

We're halfway through the year already and have really had some great fun:

January - Animal Action Dice Game for the book Barnyard Dance.
February - Cause & Effect Box for If You Give a Moose a Muffin.
March - an alphabetical scavenger hunt for Dr. Seuss's ABC.
April - handwashing fun to go along with The Piggy in the Puddle.
May - 5 Little Monkeys Fold 'Em Up for Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed.

Now it's June, and for the second time this year, we didn't already own the chosen book, (we hadn't even heard of it before!)  The Princess and the Pony.

Not a problem, of course, because we love the library, but once again I was meeting a book for the first time and then needing to create an activity to match.



Our first task, of course, was to get familiar with the book by reading through it a few times.

And, oh, did we read it.

The moment we flipped over the final page to expose the clever back inside cover, Gv would shout, "again! again!" which meant that I got to read the silly thing for the 36th time in a row.

Needless to say, we got to know this book pretty well during the 14 weeks we've been keeping it captive from the library...

Upon learning that the featured character's name is "Pinecone," I knew we'd be turning one of the many pinecones found at our local park's playground into a princess:

Pipe cleaner hair & mouth, some googly eyes, a construction paper hat with a little tissue paper veil and then wrap her up in a tissue paper gown.  I just used regular old Elmer's to hold it all in place, but I'm sure a glue gun would be even smarter.

It was really pretty simple to do and we think she's awfully cute, but I was determined to come up with something else a bit more involved.


That's when I thought of creating some Cozy Sweater Warrior Paper Dolls.

We were so tickled over the page in the story where Pinecone bestows cozy sweaters on all of her new warrior friends.  Each one is unique and fun and I knew we'd enjoy designing our own Cozy Warrior Sweaters to play with.

The first page of this printable contains both a boy and girl warrior, along with one blank sweater.

The second page is full of sweaters for you to design - then you can either mix and match them on the two warriors, or print out more warrior friends to have an entire battle with!

Gv isn't quite old enough to enjoy paper dolls independently yet, but she certainly enjoyed working on this project with me.

She colored one sweater on her own, then we worked together for a couple others, and while I drew in designs on two more by myself, she added stickers to the fronts of the rest.

Gv cut them all out first, then I came around and trimmed them.

These work best with cardstock, but I was just lazy (& cheap!) and used plain paper.

Download your free Cozy Sweater Warrior Paper Dolls here.

Has your child ever played with paper dolls before?  I'd love to hear!  Either leave a comment below or email me at lisahealy (at) outlook (dot) com.

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Click here to see what other bloggers have come up with for this book.

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