Product Description

An activity that keeps kids from uttering those terrifying words, "I'm bored!"

You may know John Lithgow as star of stage, screen, and television or even as a bestselling children's book author. But his most important role -- parent -- was also the most fun. Whether building cardboard castles or putting on a King and I puppet show or conducting a treasure hunt in the National Gallery of Art, John has spent years perfecting the art of the palooza.

• A palooza doesn't cost much (some cost absolutely nothing)

• A palooza is instigated or organized by parents but is quickly taken over by children

• A palooza may involve a computer but never the TV

• A palooza may use all varieties of arts and crafts

• A palooza may secretly teach children (and parents!) a thing or two

• A palooza is entertaining for the entire family

• A palooza depends entirely on the inexhaustible creativity, ingenuity, imagination, and sense of fun of young minds

This book contains 101 ideas for creating paloozas for children ages 3 to 12 wherever you are. Grouped according to interests and themes -- like art, drama, music, vacations, and birthdays -- and incorporating lots of extrapaloozas, fun facts for parent and child, and suggested additional reading for all ages, John's paloozas range from adopting your own soup can for a day to inventing your own secret language to establishing left-handed day or creating a self-portrait. A Lithgow Palooza! is an utterly unique collection of original activities guaranteed to transform any household from bored to bubbling with fun.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #359957 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Actor and children's author Lithgow (I'm a Manatee) has amassed a whimsical yet educational collection of activities parents can use to keep kids of all ages amused and engaged in learning while having fun. The book is divided into themed sections: "Big Paloozas," "Performance Paloozas," "Word Paloozas," "Music Paloozas" and other games. In each, parents will find suggestions rated by age and budget (most can be done cheaply or for free) such as building a fairy house from a shoebox, inventing a secret language or pretending to be an animal for a day. Lithgow accompanies many of the ideas, such as creating a photo essay (for children age nine and up), by noteworthy sidebars (in this case, a short history of photographer Gordon Parks). Lithgow's many years as a children's performer and author have served him well; the activities are, for the most part, varied and original. And the author, who used many of these while raising his own kids, has a knack for tapping into children's minds and worlds. Yet he presents his material in a straightforward manner that will make the games and projects easy for parents to implement and supervise, including the "running time" for each "palooza," related topics to pursue and suggested reading materials. With simple yet intriguing ideas, this is a delightful compilation to be used on rainy or sunny days with kids. Lithgow's humor and wit will inspire parents and children to rediscover the joys of good, old-fashioned imaginative play.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author
John Lithgow is the New York Times bestselling author of I Got Two Dogs, Mahalia Mouse Goes to College, Marsupial Sue Presents: The Runaway Pancake, I'm A Manatee, Micawber, Marsupial Sue, The Remarkable Farkle McBride, and Carnival of the Animals. An award-winning actor, he has starred on stage, film, and television. He performs concerts across the country, and has recorded the CDs Farkle and Friends, Singin' in the Bathtub and The Sunny Side of the Street. Visit John at lithgowforkids.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
CHAPTER ONE: the big paloozas

Adopt-a-Soup Can

Hold on to your hats, this is a nutty palooza. But trust me, the kids will love it. Andy Warhol exalted sameness in his Campbell's Soup Can series. This palooza brings an individual can of soup to life and gives it a personality all its own.

What's the Palooza?

Choose a can of soup to adopt. Roam the soup aisle at the grocery store and read aloud the names of various kinds of soup. Pick a soup that tickles your fancy and bring it home to "live." Invent a name that suits your soup can's personality; think Beany Bacon, Alpha Beth Soup, Tommy Tomato, Charlie Chowder, and so on.

At home with the soup, make a birth certificate for it. Look at your own birth certificate as a sidelight. Include the soup can's name, date, time, and place of birth (date of purchase, and store name), and the name of its legal guardian (your name). Once the soup can is named and has proper documentation, invent the soup can's life story and personality traits. Then dress it accordingly.

To dress the soup can, carefully remove the paper label. Trace the outline of the label onto a piece of paper to make a can-sized "dress" pattern. Design and color the new dress (or pants, bathing suit, tutu, and so on) for the can using the pattern. Thinking of its personality, use the soup can's favorite colors and patterns. Stripes. Solids. Citrussy oranges and pinks. Businessy blues and grays. Don't forget to leave space to draw a face onto the paper. Outfit the can by taping on his new clothes. Add hair by attaching pieces of yarn to the top of the can with tape.

A soup can's accessories say much about his personality. Dress him up for a business meeting by adding a little necktie. Draw an umbrella and handbag for her. Or a baseball cap and glove for him.

What's your soup can like? She's a little bit shy, but loves Audrey Hepburn movies. He's always green with pea-soup envy. Does she socialize with other soups or prefer the company of mixed nuts? The idea is to make the can as interesting a character as possible. And to get her involved in your life! She comes to the table for meals. She helps with homework. She goes to ballet class and soccer practice. She may even go to school for show-and-tell. Be sure to tell how she got that dent below her ingredients list. It's quite a story.

Extrapalooza

Souper Can!

Souper Can is a soup-can superhero. He's got whatever powers you dream up for him. (And he's probably wearing a cape and lots of spandex!) Take photos or draw pictures of Souper Can doing outrageous superhero kinds of things. Use the photos or drawings to make a comic book of Souper Can's adventures. Souper Can lands on the roof of the dollhouse for an amazing rescue of a cat stranded on the second-story windowsill. Souper Can bravely cleans his plate of Mom's asparagus casserole. Souper Can discusses playground safety with the school principal. Souper Can looks under a child's bed with concern. Write funny captions or dialogue to go with the pictures.

Junk Garden

By planting in unusual objects, planting an entire garden in an old tire, or decorating a whole garden with quirky found objects, kids get to flex their resourceful and imaginative muscles. They also gain an appreciation for whimsy in the garden and for the earthly delights of a garden itself.

What's the Palooza?

Create a junk garden by incorporating the odd and unusual in the backyard, family garden, or outdoor terrace by using household items -- from metal buckets or work boots to red wagons and old chairs -- as planters or garden decoration. One person's old frying pan is another's dream ornament for a patch of scarlet begonias. A toy truck displayed on a rock just so becomes an appealing garden sculpture.

Choose a patch of ground in your yard or garden that can be designated as the "junk garden." How big a patch of ground you choose depends on the size of your property, of course, and how much space you want to devote in the yard for the activity. A minimum of one square yard is plenty to start. Mark it off with stakes and twine, twigs, sticks, and stones, or other objects you gather for the garden border. Use seashells, wooden blocks, dominos, board game pieces, or even plastic race car tracks.

Once the border is defined, the junk garden is ready to be planted. Plant objects only or a combination of objects and plants. You may want to plant your objects first, so as to avoid trampling the plants. Or you may want to get impatiens or petunias in the ground first, so as to invent creative displays around them with found objects. You can also skip real plants altogether. Go wild "planting" colorful cups and saucers you've collected at yard sales or plastic juice cups. Dig a little hole in the ground and "plant" a cup so that it is sticking in the ground about halfway. Or paint wooden spoons bright colors and plant them as flowers in your garden. Plant action figures, plastic animals, Barbie, you name it.

Plant items from the kitchen or basement such as a yardstick, an old boot, measuring spoons, or flatware. Be artful about the planting and think of interesting ways to combine objects and plants. Use saucers as backdrops for small plants. Make a perch for birds out of an old spoon tied tightly to a twig with rubber bands. Tend the junk garden carefully and water frequently. Change or move the objects as you collect new items or simply to redesign the garden.

Extrapaloozas

Chair Trellis

Look for interesting old chairs at yard sales and antique stands. Choose a chair that has the patina of age or might be painted a favorite color. Position the chair in a spot that will accommodate the kind of plant you wish to grow, sun-, soil-, and water-wise. Ask your plant store for recommendations or choose a vine such as honeysuckle, sweet potato, passion flower, or a flowering bean vine, and train the vine to climb the chair. Voilà. Chair trellis.

Tire Garden

Use an old tire to make a raised bed. Fill the center of the tire with good soil and plant a tomato seedling in the center. Decorate the tire garden with Barbie shoes or marbles or other found objects. Then make tomato sandwiches in summer.

Junk Garden Themes

Choose a theme. Go all natural and use only twigs and stones, bird feathers, leaves, shells, moss-covered stones from a stream. Or make the garden dinosaurs-only. Create an imaginary universe in the garden using dollhouse furniture, "fairy furniture" made from items you collect (pipe cleaners, Popsicle sticks, toothpicks, old crayons), or twig tepees. Choose plants by theme, as well. Plant basil, lemon thyme, mint, dill, and lavender in a "nose garden." Plant snapdragon, tiger lily, catnip, and spider plants for a "zoo garden."

Container Planting

If it holds soil, and something will grow in it, it's a garden. Plant something wonderful in an old work boot. Or an old cast-iron frying pan. Or a little red wagon. Follow potting instructions for container planting from your favorite gardening book or rely on your own green thumb (paying attention to drainage, using good professional-grade potting soil, and so on), and plant to your hearts' content. Try lavender in the boot. Begonias in the wagon. Use yogurt cup liners (with a hole punched in the bottom for drainage) for planting in mugs you collect in thrift stores and yard sales. Have a mug garden collection.

Flowers for Your Garden

For immediate results in the flowerbed, plant seedlings or small plants from the nursery. Try annuals such as nasturtiums, petunias, impatiens, or verbena. Sunflowers are easy to plant from seed, and you can see growth almost daily. Green peas, lettuces, and pumpkins are fast-growing vegetables. Hollyhocks and daisies, two old-fashioned perennials, also mix well in a junk garden.

Bridges

I've never outgrown my sense of amazement at the sheer audacity of a bridge. The idea of spanning an enormous body of water while appearing suspended in air by a few thin steel threads is magical. No wonder children -- and most adults -- are endlessly fascinated by bridges.

What's the Palooza?

An exploration of bridges, mind-boggling and mysterious -- think about them, design them, build them!

Make up a quiz entirely of questions about bridges: What is the longest bridge in the world? The highest bridge? The strongest bridge? The oldest bridge? What country has the most bridges? What are all the types of bridges? What are the great bridges of the world?

Once the quiz is finished, take a trip to the library or the Internet. In looking for quiz answers, you can find out about famous bridges around the world, the history of bridges, how bridges are built, what materials they're made from, and so forth. You can also find out about the dozens of types of bridges, including suspension, cantilever beam, cable, truss, swing, and arch, to name a few. Try to find an example of each kind of bridge in your search.

Now that you know something about bridges, start building bridges out of as many different common materials as you can think of: paper, sticks, stones, clay, blocks, Legos, wire, magnets, candy, cards, toothpicks, you name it.

Begin by sketching a simple bridge. Then decide what material would work best for that particular bridge design. An arched bridge might be built out of plasticine. A truss bridge could be made of Popsicle sticks, white glue or Scotch tape, and string.

One of the simplest of all bridges is made of an 8 1/2 x 11 inch sheet of paper and six books. Take the piece of paper and rest opposite ends on a stack of three books each. Here's where the mystery of science comes in: If you try to put a weight on this paper bridge, say a few pennies, it will collapse. If you fold the paper a few times, it magically holds the weight of the pennies.

If you're feeling ambitious, make a simple scale-model truss bridge, using toothpicks, glue, cardboard, and a marker. Go to http://www.yesmag.bc.ca/proj ects/bridge.html and follow the step-by-steps.

A terrific book all about build-it-yourself bridges is Bridges...

Customer Reviews

5 stars is not enough!
Creative, innovative, superlative, outstanding. I just received my copy today and have read through one half of the book so far, but am very impressed. Every new parent should be given this book at baby showers. Lightow writes in an understandable, friendly conversation manner which is easy to understand.

As a left hander in my middle years who has struggled with the challenges and redicule of being "different", I especially appreciated the chapter relating to lefties. Creaping/galloping degeneration in usefulness of my left hand is forcing me to become ambidextrous in performing the simplest daily activities.

Thanks to a very literate and intelligent person for this great resource for parents.

My advise: Throw away the coloring books and remote controls and, buy this book.

Thanks to you Mr. Lightow for this enlighting and entertainig book. By the way, we loved Third Rock also.

CV

a delightful surprise
I'm a grade school teacher and I picked up this book looking (as ever) for a few new ideas for activities for my students. I hit the mother lode. This is as creative and refreshing a presentation of activities for kids that I have ever come across. These activities show a tremendous respect for the inherent creativity in children and prove that if you give them the time and inspire them with smart ideas, they'll create. And learn.

For example, "Bibliomancy" is a whimsical little "fortune-telling" game that asks the child to randomly choose a word from the dictionary to answer his own question about the future. So he has to read and understand the word, and then use some mighty creative logic to prove how the word points to his optimum outcome. "Color Concentration" adapts the classic memory game by using paint chips from the hardware store. So at once, kids are playing a familiar and fun memory game, becoming aware of the nuance of color, and reading those evocative paint color names. I loved "Museum Hunt," which gives adults a great way to thoroughly involve a child in the museum experience-or even replicate the experience from your own home using online art resources. And I will absolutely do "Palio" with my class next year, when they'll invent their own adaptation of the wild horserace that takes place in Siena, Italy every summer.

For the most part, the activities, or "paloozas," just require the adult to set it up and let the kids have at it. This book is a terrific resource for getting kids genuinely engaged in their own creative possibilities. It is also, by the way, a wonderfully enjoyable read for grownups, who are tossed rich and tasty tidbits on art and literature and culture that remind them of why they want to expose their kids to this stuff in the first place.