School Bus Craft

I love doing crafts with pictures, it personalizes the creation that much more when your child’s face or family is on their creation. Today was the first time we’ve used a glue stick, the reason I’ve waited this long is that my son put everything in his mouth for a long long time. I was worried about him biting off the glue stick and choking or swallowing it. Now that he is over that we had a blast using it.

1. Gather your materials. You will need 3 pieces of construction paper ( one yellow, black and a third of your choice) , 3 wallet size or smaller picture of your family, a marker, some crayons, scissors, glue, and letter stickers.
2. Start by drawing a bus on the yellow paper, make a window for each picture you are including. Don’t worry it it’s not perfect, mine was far from it.  Set aside.
3. Hand your child the green ( or other color) paper, have them draw the background. My son drew our street, we have a bus stop in our front yard.
4. While they do that cut out 2 large black circles for the tires and 2 small yellow ones for the hub caps.
5. Hand your child the bus when they are finished with the background and let them go nuts- he’s really into using all the crayons at once right now.
6. Cut a long black strip ( to go along the side of the bus).
7. When they are done drawing add stickers to the black strip, I wrote out the word BUS and then my son decided to add a ripped T, cool!
8. Add glue to the bus and the strip.
9. Time to cut out the bus, cut out the windows. While I cut my son sung “Wheels on the Bus”- although we had some interesting bus riders, like his garbage truck, his preschool teachers and my sister’s dog.  
10. Before gluing it down add the cut out bus to the paper and make x’s in the window openings so you know where to place the glue and pictures. 
11. Add the glue.
12. Add the pictures
13. Add the bus
14. Add the glue for the wheels and pop them on.
15. Don’t forget the yellow middles.
16. Let dry.

Books

“Cheech The School Bus Driver” by Cheech Marin was one of those books that you read the authors name and think , really they wrote a kids book?  I am here to say this book was thoroughly enjoyable and had a fantastic message about being yourself amidst pressure to be something else.  The book starts out with Cheech being funny but soon you find out the children he drives are all in a Mariachi band and in a big competition! They question themselves and how hip or not hip they are but in the end they are true to their music and themselves.

“The Wheels On The School Bus” by Mary-Alice Moore has been read over and over and over again in our house.  My son loves this adaptation of the classic song so much he exclaimed that we forgot to add a nurse on out school bus today. see in this book not only are there children, but  all sorts of teachers, lunch ladies, a nurse and custodian too. The bus driver even swaps out his driver hat for a principal one as the bus arrives at school!  Cut book and clearly approved by my little book reviewer!

“The School Bus Driver From The Black Lagoon” by Mike Thaler is one of a very popular series that includes other school professions like teacher, school nurse and gym teacher! The book is really about one little boys anxiety about going on the school bus.  He imagines the driver as a dinosaur, who races the bus and forces the children to give him their lunch money.  When the bus arrives the driver turns out to be nothing like he expected! I was worried this book would be too scary for my little guy but he liked it , I think the ridiculousness of a T-Rex driving a bus made it all ok and not scary.