Blueberries for Sal Paper Plate Craft Activity

This fun paper plate craft is a great hands on activity inspired by Robert McCloskey’s book, Blueberries for Sal.  If you haven’t already read Blueberries for Sal, you’ll want to add it to your list; it’s one of our favorites!

Reading good children’s books is one of our favorite ways to be intentional about learning around here. 

Any other curriculum or activities aside, no matter how the day is going, I can can be sure that if I ask my boys if they want to read a book, they will both run to the bookshelves to start pulling down their favorites. 

We love reading aloud.

And we love doing hand-on activities based on our favorite books!  It’s fun way to help retell the story, remember the details, and to make connections to other things we are learning about. 

Blueberries for Sal

One of our favorite books from the summer was Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey.  It’s a classic children’s book that tells a sweet story about Sal and her mother’s adventure picking blueberries to can for the winter right alongside a mother bear and baby bear’s attempt to get their own fill of berries.  

Our boys love it and ask for it to be read over and over.  And it really is such a sweet story, so how can I say no? 

We spent a full week on Blueberries for Sal and we all looked forward to it each day. 

Blueberries for Sal Paper Plate Craft

One of our favorite Blueberries for Sal activities was this simple paper plate craft.  

Originally inspired by this Blueberries for Sal activity (via Inspire-Motherhood), we decided to make our own blueberry pails with paper plates!

Supplies

Chances are you already have everything you need to make these paper plate blueberry pails. 

• Paper Plate
• Brown Construction Paper
• Blue Construction Paper
• Scissors
• Glue

Directions

• Cut a semi-circle out of the top of your paper plate to create the handle and the pail shape (see above photo for reference.)
  • Keep it for the next step. 
• Trace the semi-circle you cut out onto brown construction paper.  This will make the bucket part of your blueberry pail. 
• Using the blue construction paper, cut out several circle shapes for blueberries. 
  • Note – these do NOT have to be perfect or the same size, after all, real blueberries are each unique.  No reason to hold your paper berries to higher standards.
  • To get some extra scissor practice in, and depending on the age of your kids, you can let them cut out their own blueberries from construction paper.  
  • I cut them out for my boys to save time (and because my 4 year old asked me to cut his, too when he saw I had cut a few berries for his little brother).
• Use glue to stick blueberries in your pail. 

For fun, practice saying, “kerplink, kerplank, kerplunk!” as you glue down the berries to imitate the sounds of the berries dropping in mother’s pail in the story. 

We had fun filling up our blueberry pails, counting how many berries we had collected, and comparing who had the most berries in their buckets.  

Have you read Blueberries for Sal?  What are some of your favorite children’s books? 

Be sure to check out all of our Blueberries for Sal activities here!