Welcome to the Picnic Parade!  It’s that time of year again, when everyone is either out of school and trying to keep kids reading, or they are trying to make the end of school fun.  Enter the Picnic Parade!  We are here to help you have fun and engage with some great literature.  Over the next two weeks, you will be taken on a tour of great books and activities that your whole family will love.  Be sure to check out last year’s Picnic Parade for even more great ideas.  

Everyone is trying to keep kids reading this summer. Enter the Picnic Parade! Click To Tweet

At this year’s Picnic Parade, you will discover:

Imagination Station 19: Light in the Lion’s Den , Dinosuars, and Who Was Mother Theresa from right here at Minivan Ministries

The Trellis & the Seed from Yvie at Gypsie Road School

The Sign Painter’s Dream from Joan of Kid Frugal

Ladybug Girl at the Beach from Tori of Mess to Blessed

Now on with our picnic!

The Location

What better place to have a lion picnic than the zoo?  We headed to our local zoo and discovered that they do not have lions!  That didn’t stop us, however.  We still had fun strolling around and getting into that wild animal spirit.   

The Book

Then he said to me, “Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand and humbled yourself before your God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words.” Daniel 10:12 ESV

Imagination Station is a great series of Christian themed books that also teach history.  Light in the Lions’ Den (AIO Imagination Station Books) takes us into the story of Daniel in the Lion’s Den straight from the book of Daniel.  This has always been one of my kids’ favorite bible stories.  I love taking an old story and putting a new twist on it.  Not only that, but we also got to to talk about King Nebuchadnezzar’s statue and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego when the book referred to them.  

Lion Food

In honor of our book, we chose to have a lion themed picnic.  We made lion tortillas with cheesey manes.  The eyes were boiled eggs.  Cheese and pepperoni made the mouths.  There were also pretzel whiskers.   Each child made their own with just a little instruction.  

We ate our lion tortillas with lion humus and pita chips.  (I totally forgot to get out the carrots.  Oops.  So much for vegetables!)

Add in a Little Math

Animal crackers rounded out the picnic.  Before we ate them, we took the opportunity to do a little graphing.  We used this Grab and Graph Math Centre.  My 6 year old loves graphing, so she thought this was a fun picnic idea.  

Lion Art

We rounded out the Day with lion art.  We used very simple shapes and lions to create lion faces.  Each one looked quite different.   My 3 year old did all her own artwork using a step by step tutorial.  I may be biased, but I think it’s amazing!

Enjoy!  

I highly encourage you to check out the Imagination Station books.  Although Imagination Station’s Light in the Lion’s Den was Book 19 in the series, you can figure out what the general idea of the series is by reading the prologue. If you like this book, you will probably enjoy the whole series and other Adventures in Odyssey books.  Not only that, but Adventures in Odyssey also has audio books.

See you at the next picnic!  

What is your favorite children’s book?  Do you have any special activities that coordinate with it?

Check out these inspiring Picnic Parade ideas:

A Rainbow of My Own

A Nighttime Picnic with Night Animals

Picnic at the Oklahoma Land Run

The House at Pooh Corner

Burgess Bird Book–Welcome Spring!

Boxcar Children Adventures!  

A Picnic with Frog and Toad

Imagination Station’s “Light in the Lion’s Den”

The Trellis and the Seed

Picnic with the Dinosaurs

The Sign Painter’s Dream

Picnic with a Purpose:  Who Was Mother Teresa?

Ladybug Girl at the Beach

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