My name is Susan, and I am an online drawing application-aholic! Today I found a new one, Slimber, via MakeUseOf.com, and it is very cute. I think your kids will love it. What a shame I can't draw to save my life!
Once you go to the Slimber site, click Painter, then choose the dimensions of your art work. There are several tools and a colour palette to explore, and you can adjust brush sizes and shapes. My method was to play with each tool and colour to make a shapes picture which I oh-so-hopefully called abstract art. Once you've made your "art work", you can save it, or watch it again as a movie via the play button in the left bottom corner. It's fascinating to watch the movie of the development of a beautiful and complicated piece like the Golden Sun Over Hawaii.
Once saved, your work appears in the gallery, and there you can click on it, and get its url, or the html to embed it.
I like that there is no join up, so this is an ideal drawing editor if your kids need to make a quick digital picture of something, or to encourage their creative side under your supervision. It would be even better if it were easy to add clear text to a drawing, but you need to use the pencil for that. Writing with a mouse has never been this chook's strong suit!
If you're looking for other online art editors, you can link via my article on another drawing tool, Flockdraw.
I discovered ARKive recently, via MakeUseOf.com and I am super impressed. The main purpose of the site is to create the ultimate multimedia archive of the world's endangered animals. So important, because over 17,000 animals, plants and fungi are currently threatened with extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources' Red List of Threatened Species. The images and video are excellent quality, and available for internal educational use ie you can't publish them on your website etc, but can use them in a classroom. Such a pity, I would have loved to share one here. However, I found fascinating pictures and information about creatures presumed to be extinct like the highland slender loris, and I loved the feature where you can use geography to explore the site, or common AND scientific names. It's a work in progress, so information is still being prepared, but there is lots to see and do. Part of ARKive, ARKive Education is an amazing resource for parents, teachers and children. ARKive Education is a resource bank for teachers and other educators who are interested in helping children to become more aware of wildlife and conservation issues. Making use of the stunning imagery available on the main ARKive website, ARKive Education provides downloadable, ready-to-use modules on a wide range of curriculum topics, suitable for geography, biology, environmental education and citizenship lessons. If your youngster loves animals, loves to learn about them and examine them closely, this website is the next best thing to real life. Information is clear and engaging, and is written by people who are qualified biologists. And the images are brilliant! ARKive Education also has interactive games which encourage kids to learn about plants, animals and conservation. These are not flashy bells and whistle games but engaging nonetheless. I liked 24 hour Survival - a Day in the Life of a Sand Lizard, where you have to help a sand lizard survive 24 hours of his life. (Phew, it is so much easier being a chicken!) You'll also find Design a habitat, Copse and robbers (a detective-type game), Magnetic fridge poetry, and other puzzles and learning games. One extra feature I like in ARKive Education is for signed-up members, who can make and share their own image and video collections - great for classrooms!
(Thanks to Photos8.com for the great reptile image!)
Following directions in print or on video is a great activity for kids. If you know a subject that intrigues them, why not use Google to see if some kind (and articulate) person has posted directions for how to do it. The articulate part comes in because it's easier for all of us to follow clear, well-thought out directions. I wrote an article about following directions last year, called Recycle and Read, where I described Arvind Gupta's wonderful website, Toys from Trash.
Here's another example of a great site I think most children will love. It's done by a paper aeroplane enthusiast: Alex's Paper Airplanes. It has video and print directions, plus diagrams that teach you the necessary folds and cuts. There are some fairly unobtrusive Google ads, but the written directions are clear, and there's even a flying lesson to get you started. I went flying yesterday with the little helicopter!Fun Paper Airplanes is a different site with free downloadable templates for planes, which might be useful if your kids are younger.
If paper folding in general interests your children, try Wikipedia's guide to origami folds and Tammy Yee's Origami Page, or check out my article Fold Me Up, Scotty, particularly the comments where author Sandy Fussell gives a neat link on Origami and Maths.
Constructing and flying paper aeroplanes is a wonderful activity for the holidays or a wet weekend. Institute a challenge like who can invent the plane that flies highest or furthest, or land on a precise spot, or loop the loop. Offer prizes or a trophy too if you want. Kids are investigating principles of flight, and developing skills in creative and analytical thinking, hypothesizing and testing theories. It involves them in a scientific activity, but best of all it's fun! If your children want to follow up and explore more about flight, perhaps learn about gyroscopic procession and torque, try NASA's Aerospace Activities and Lessons.
If your child is particularly interested in an activity, maybe they could write clear directions for it, or create a how-to video about it. You'll find lots of video examples at Youtube.
I have fallen in love with a new children's picture book. It's Tatiara, written and illustrated by Jo Oliver, and published by New Frontier (2010).
A girl and a seal become friends
in a sheltered bay and, in time,
healing comes to each of them.
I like the way our young heroine is so matter-of-fact about her physical disability - a curved spine, for which she wears a back brace. She longs to swim with her injured seal friend, Tatiara, but she must make do with a bathtub instead. It doesn't stop her catching fish for Tatiara, even though the seal pup is perfectly capable of catching them herself.
Oliver's illustrations are created by dry-point etching coloured with vibrant watercolour washes in the colours of the sea. (New Frontier) What this means to me is each picture is evocative, rather than photorealistic. They give a very special "feel" to the book , transporting us to its setting in Tathra, on the far south coast of NSW. The illustrations in sepia tones seem to show old interior walls with water stains. You can see so much light and spray in the rolling waves of the seascape as Oliver captures the essence of ocean. And the dry-point etching enables delighful fine detail.
Setting is a real feature of Tatiara, with not just the physical features of the local area being incorporated into the story, but also historical details. The young narrator shows us glimpses of Tathra's past, when cargo was loaded from steamers onto the wharf, and whalers would come to harpoon whales.
According to the publisher's guidelines, Tatiara is suitable for children with a reading age of 4-8 years, but I urge you to consider it for older children too. I think it is a perfect acquisition for libraries, and homes that appreciate beautiful books. The story and words are simple enough for young children to share, but have an ageless quality. It's the sort of book you close with a sigh, and that stays with you for a very long time.
Learn Something Every Day is a trivia fan's dream come true. There's a quirky fact published each day, with accompanying cute cartoon-style sketch, and you can scroll through to read earlier facts.
The facts might make interesting discussion starters, or be a good focus for further reading and research in a classroom situation. Students might even decide to use a fact as a challenge eg "The greatest height a chicken egg has been dropped without cracking is 700 feet." What inventions can kids create to carry an egg safely to the ground?
I love the art work too, which is a great example of using just a few lines to communicate an idea. Some of it might offend some people, so as ever, use caution. I think children would enjoy creating their own cartoon art to illustrate a fact of their choice. For the samples here, I used a quick program called Skitch, but you could also use Photoshop, or an online art editor. Kids might enjoy looking for some interesting facts at Science Kids.
Do you need to know who is coming to your next function? Maybe you're starting your own fan club and expect thousands to join? Having a book launch and you want numbers for catering? Need a sign up sheet for the Under Seven Soccer kids? Or maybe number one son is having his birthday soon?
SignApp Now is a very simple idea that helps you keep track of guests/members. All you need to do is create a sign-up page, then you email people the url. Once they get it, they sign up. There is no need to register - I plunged in and it took me 30 seconds to type the details they wanted. One click, and I got a url to direct people to. (However, if you want to edit the sheet, you need to register.)
How easy is that! So what's the catch? Well, that sheet only lasts five days before it expires. If your son's birthday party is in five days' time however, it could be handy. You can also get the list in XLS format for $1.00.
Teaching kids how to use applications like this is useful for their functional reading and writing skills. In essence, this is a very simple spread sheet. Your child might like to send invitations to her next sleepover via SignApp Now!
I commented the other day on the beautiful Learning Parade blog, that a visit there always gives my art heart a lift. And so it does, but it started me pondering those two words.
Like many people, I can't draw for nuts, yet it has always been something I wished I could do. Is that what makes me especially appreciate lovely visuals when I see them? I love to browse in art galleries, cartoon books, graphic design blogs and children's illustrator websites. And I know I'm obsessed with technology and image creation. Somehow, I suspect that's because I hope one day someone will invent an application that lets me create drawings I can be proud of.
I think it's also because I love to play. Yes, I know I dress it up by calling it creativity, but at core, I am playing with colour, pattern, shapes and lines. I fiddle a little here, tweak a tad there, and satisfy my instinct to make art. Even when that art is scribbled yellow stick figures on a blue background. Inside my head, a happy voice is asking, "What will happen if I change that bit?" and "Does that colour please me against the blue?" My adult head recognizes that my scribbles are nothing like what artists produce, but my childish heart ignores that and has fun anyway.
I don't have any formal training in Art, though perhaps you worked that out already? Instead, I pick up bits and pieces as I roam cyberspace and real world galleries. I look at a picture or sculpture and react to it viscerally, and perhaps emotionally. Then I ask myself questions about it:
What do I like about it?
How does it make me feel?
What would I change about it?
What was the artist trying to achieve?
How did they create this picture?
Does it tell a story/have a message?
What is it?
How will I react to this artwork?
This last question might elicit a response that leads me to create something of my own - more play!
Perhaps even those of us without training can encourage an appreciation of art in our kids, and support their natural curiosity and desire to experiment. I suggest we could do this by practical means - setting aside a place where mess is okay, assembling different materials for art play - and philosophically - sharing our own interest in artistic endeavours and asking our kids questions that encourage creative thinking. I think we need to make sure kids experience a wide range of media, while emphasizing the "it's okay to play and have fun" message.
My friend Jeanne at A Peaceful Day has some wonderful, practical ideas for getting the most out of a trip to the art gallery with a child. Our aim she says, should be to "... share the joy of art with your children." If it's getting started with art making you need tips on, Art Junction has ideas that might spark art in your family.
How about you? I'd love to read your ideas. Do you have an art heart too? What do you do to nurture it? How can we nurture art hearts in our kids? And is that important?
Paint a simple masterpiece. Make a point visually. Do whatever you want. Do it together. Grab a tool. Pick a color. Draw something. Show a friend. Show the world. Share your vision.
What's Flockdraw? It's an online art editor I discovered recently. You can sign in with Twitter, or simply pick any user name.
It works very easily and intuitively. There's a panel on the right side that you navigate to choose colour, brush size, line tool, fill tool, text, brush tool and eraser. Paint goes on smoothly, making it easy to enjoy the swirl and flow. Use the arrows to change tools, colours etc.
You can embed what you create, or save it to your own computer as a png file.
This is definitely one of the slickest art editors I have used. Kids might like to draw characters and scenes for their digital stories here, or simply have fun experimenting with shapes, spots and vibrant colour the way I did.
Finding the right books for reluctant readers isn't easy. That's why I get excited when I find books that are totally out of the ordinary, ones that lead readers down different pathways. Might this book appeal to your child?
Burgher and the Woebegone is the latest book by Kim Chatel, with illustrations by Samantha Bell, and published by Guardian Angel Publishing, 2010. It's a fantasy, a fairy tale even, cleverly woven into a choose-your-own-adventure format.
There is something endearing about Burgher, despite his distaste for such loveliness as Spring and butterflies:
Burgher was a gnome, which is just another way of saying an ugly elf. ... His beard was as gray as his heart and tangled with bits of twigs and last night’s dinner. ... Burgher liked gray. He worked in his garden bed, plucking the few green shoots that dared to poke through the mud. Only fungus and slugs were allowed in his garden. Slugs were dependable and no one ever made a fuss over fungus.
You see, Burgher has a broken heart, and broken hearts are prone to making us grumble and grouch. Above all, he loathes Jonny Gold and the Queen Apple Tree, and does his best to get rid of them. Will his efforts work? Will his way to happiness be through that door marked 'Misery'?
I loved the contraptions Burgher built to carry out his plans. I laughed aloud at this grumpy gnome's antics. I enjoyed the quirky characters, and pursuing different pathways of Burgher's story. Above all, I appreciated the underlying theme: that though we paint ourselves into a lonely corner, and make really disastrous mistakes, "destinies can be changed, but the heart will always find a way out of loneliness."
I've read and reviewed two of Kim Chatel's children's books before: Rainbow Sheep and A Talent for Quiet, both published by Guardian Angel Publishing. One of the many things that impresses me about this talented author is her versatility. Rainbow Sheep was illustrated by Kim's own fiber art pictures, and A Talent for Quiet featured Kim's photographs, plus tips for kids on photography. With Burgher and the Woebegone, Samantha Bell is the artistic director. Her sketches give an extra touch of whimsy and humour to the book, adding details we can enjoy before moving on to find what that very grumpy gnome does next.
I love the way the choose-your-own-adventure style gives a child some control over a story. It means a youngster can interact with the book, stimulating his imagination and encouraging him to make decisions that affect its outcome. With Burgher and the Woebegone, another bonus is that you can actually get the book in different formats - a print book, and an ebook, where kids click on a hyperlink to design their own story pathway. Kids who enjoy this book might like to try writing a choose-your-own-adventure story of their own, or create their own tale about a grouchy gnome named Burgher. To find out more about the book, watch an animated trailer, and read an excerpt, visit Chatel Village.
At Cacoo, you can create diagrams in real time collaboration.
Cacoo is a user friendly online drawing tool that allows you to create a variety of diagrams such as site maps, wire frames, UML and network charts. Cacoo can be used free of charge.
You can no doubt see by my illustrated sample that I have little need of Cacoo's service. I automatically tried to tell a story, which is not what it's about. But it's an impressive tool for those who need to create diagrams. There is a nice range of shapes and stencils you can use, plus customize to colour and fit your page. Dragging those to place, then connecting them, takes mere moments. Another feature I liked is that it really does allow for realtime collaboration, so you can work together with someone else on your flowchart, say.
There's a video you can watch to understand it better, and I've embedded it below. Another new diagram-making program is Simple Diagrams which I read about recently at Free Technology for Teachers. It is a download, but looks to be exactly what it says. There's a free and paid version.
It must be obvious to regular readers of The Book Chook (bless you all!) that I love great children's picture books. Part of the reason is that these books are so important in raising children who love to read. If we can share bright, beautiful and engaging stories with our kids from the time they are babies, we are helping them love to learn and succeed at school.
A little boy searches for his mum. He finds all sorts of interesting mums, a ‘waking mum’, a ‘baking mum’ , a ‘camping mum and a ‘stamping mum’ but where is his Mum? He finally spies his mum, the one that loves him so. ‘She’s the one for me.’
I Spy Mum would make a great companion for Brian's I Spy Dad, which I reviewed here at The Book Chook, and which has been shortlisted for the Speech Pathology Book of the Year Award. Both are typical of Brian's rhyming picture books - a strong rhythm, impeccable rhyme, and above all, FUN! Fun to read aloud, fun to share with kids, and fun to discuss and respond to.
Stewart's illustrative style is perfect for the book. There are lots of lovely visual details to pause and ponder over - like the dabble-drawing mum, who has paint brushes skewered into her bun and green streaked hair.
I Spy Mum is an ideal choice for students studying the family, for Mothers Day, or simply to celebrate the wonderful people our mums truly are.
There's something about cows. Is it those big velvety eyes, fanned by long lashes? Is it the warmth and contentment you feel when you're watching their rhythmic chewing of the cud? Is it the pied beauty of their skin patterns, none of them quite the same?
Why not read books with your kids today that celebrate cows? Here's a review of one called This is the Mud, by Australian author, Kathryn Apel. You could write a list of facts that you and your children think you know about cows, and check your facts online or at the library. Follow up with a list of what you would like to learn about cows. You could also take a trip to a farm and visit some real cows.
To celebrate Cow Appreciation Day, I came up with a list of simple questions and answers and tried creating an arcade game at ClassTools.net where you can get free customisable flash templates to embed into blogs, wikis etc. Once I'd put my set of questions and answers in, I tried the game, and got the code to embed on my blog, plus a url. As you will see, there are five different choices of game, but all are built around my original ten questions and answers. Click on the blue words of Matching Pairs, Wordshoot, Flashcards, Manic Miner or Cannonball Fun to try the games below. There are other choices at ClassTools.net, all free, and I think they would make a great addition to a class blog or wiki.
Another way to harness (ahem!) technology to express our appreciation for cows would be to use Motivator from Big Huge Labs to design a poster. It's a simple matter of choosing a few options, then uploading your cow picture. I quickly downloaded one from Morguefile so I didn't need to include an attribution on my poster, which you can see above. (Thank you Morguefile!)
Winston Churchill said,"Odd things animals. All dogs look up to you. All cats look down to you. Only a pig looks at you as an equal." I think cows look at us that way too, and that's A Good Thing, right?
Recently, I told you about a wonderful support for family literacy, the PBS Kids Reading Activity Calendar. According to this calendar, July 14 is Pandemonium Day. I just love this great idea to celebrate all things chaotic, and have some fun with literacy. Here's what the calendar says:
July 14, Pandemonium Day: It’s time to get silly! On sticky notes or index cards, make labels for some everyday objects like “phone,” “TV,” “keys,” and “pillow.” Then put the wrong labels on each item and have your child switch them to the correct spots.
Want some more ideas to share with your kids? Look up the word pandemonium in a dictionary. Can kids think of other words that are similar or opposite in meaning? Have they ever witnessed pandemonium? Can they draw a cartoon of a situation that might lead to pandemonium? What stories or poems have they read about pandemonium? Was it pandemonium when the wild things made a ruckus? What does pandemonium look like? Sound like? Smell like? Feel like? Taste like? Use some of those words and impressions to write a poem together.
Pandemonium Day would be a great time to read your favourite poems, too - LOUDLY! Have fun with words. Play substitution, where you use a word like "caterpillar" instead of "yes", and "pickle pie" instead of "no". All day! Can your kids say sentences backwards? This would be a great opportunity to teach them pig latin, too. Here's a translator that will change your sentences into pig latin in case you need a start.
Can you play with the word PANDEMONIUM and see if it sparks a story? Panda - monium might be about the day two baby pandas escaped from the zoo. What might pandemoonium be about? Or pondemonium? Or pandemonimum? There are some pandemoni-mums in my picture above.
Make this a day where you do the unexpected. How long is it since you wore undies on your head, or ate lunch up a tree? What crazy things can your kids think up, and are you game to carry them out? Experiment with household objects to see which ones make the most noise. Play homemade instruments. Make up songs.
Have fun!
And if Pandemonium Day is too much to contemplate, celebrate Bastille Day on July 14 instead.
Recently, I wrote two articles about Eating Our Way to Literacy. I suggested ideas for starting our own family recipe books, and voila! somehow, the Book Chook Cook Book was born. It's available to you as a free pdf from my website right now. I think you'll enjoy the quick and easy recipes, most of them simple enough to make with your kids.
Many thanks to the generous contributors, and especially to Tif of Tif Talks Books whose eagle editing eyes spotted my typos, and who compiled the Cooking with Kids section.
From Tif:
The Book Chook Cook Book fun does not have to end here. I would like to invite you all to Tif Talks Books to share your own recipes, cooking literacy tips, pictures of cooking with kids, and so much more. Don't hesitate to incorporate literacy into your daily lives and share your creativity with the rest of us! Simply click on the icon in the left-hand sidebar at Tif Talks Books for the direct link in sharing more, whether it be Simple Cooking or Cooking with Kids.
Perhaps you noticed that my first children's picture book, Monster Maddie, was published earlier this year? I've been learning lots about marketing and promotion, which are very important skills for writers to get their heads around.
One useful tool for spreading the word about a published book is a book video preview, also known as a book trailer. This is like a movie trailer. It's supposed to tell just enough about the book to entice a watcher to find out more, then hopefully go on and buy/read the book. I guess it's a little like an advertisement, too, and good ones always include details about where to buy the book.
I was tempted to try creating my own video for Monster Maddie, but I decided to go for a professional look instead. Kim Chatel is the founder of Blazing Trailers. This is a website where authors can post trailers, and viewers can browse to find books of interest, all for free. Kim also makes video book previews for a few select clients, and she is very, very good at what she does. So I asked Kim to make Monster Maddie, the Movie!
What I love about this video is the way Kim has given the flavour of my picture book using text, pictures, sound effects and music. She's kept it short because viewers are almost always time-crunched. Kim has blended K.C.Snider's charming illustrations with colourful background slides, and added interesting transitions for variety and sparkle. I'm thrilled with the result which you can see embedded below, or at Blazing Trailers.
If you're an author wanting a way to reach out to people via multimedia, I thoroughly recommend you make or have made a video book preview. Once it's done, you have a product that enables buyers to find you via YouTube, websites like Blazing Trailers, your own website and blog. Submitting it to Blazing Trailers is free and easy. To ask Kim to consider making you a trailer, contact her via the website, and mention The Book Chook!
If you're a reader, consider using sites like YouTube and Blazing Trailers as a fascinating way to find interesting new books. It might be a great way to encourage your kids to browse among new titles too.
It would be great to be a young princess, right? But what if you were a princess like Belle, and all you wanted was to be a clown? Princesses aren't supposed to swing from chandeliers, wear fuzzy orange wigs, pull coins from people's ears or other fun things. Will Belle be able to reconcile being a royal princess AND a clown? Princess Clown was written by Sheryl Gwyther, illustrated by Sian Naylor, and published by Blake Education as part of their Gigglers series. Gigglers are easy readers, books that support youngsters who are not yet ready for longer chapter books. Princess Clown does this by having lots of white space and illustrations to break up the text, large font, and simple sentence structure. According to Blake Education, it is perfect for kids who have a reading age of around 7. It's obvious Gwyther understands what kids want in books such as these, because the story, though simple, is such a fast-paced, enjoyable read. I really like the way the book is NOT dumbed down - instead, Gwyther has included words like banquet, chortle and souffle, words to provide interest and expand children's vocabulary. Heroine, Belle, is a character kids will relate to, one who is determined to follow her dreams. Naylor's illustrations are colourful and cartoonish. They add an extra dimension to the book by including some elements not specified in the text. Kids will love Belle's combination princess/clown costume! Details in such pictures also support young readers with text prediction, an important consideration in an easy reader. There are lots of great teaching points in the way this Giggler is set out. There's a character list, a table of contents, and an illustrated glossary - more opportunities for kids to read formats other than a narrative. Another feature I like is teaching notes which point out the story's orientation, complication, and resolution. They give teachers, parents and kids questions to think about before, during and after reading. Wouldn't it be fun to follow up reading Princess Clown with a dress-up day? Kids could organize their own circus, complete with clown acts and posters to advertise them. Young writers might like to take two unrelated nouns and develop a character and story to go with them - like princess and clown, dinosaur and dancer, farmer and duck. Do share with them that that is precisely the kind of prompt that started this story in the first place! You can buy Princess Clown from Blake Education, or find out more about the other books in the Gigglers series. Discover more about Princess Clown and its author by visiting some of the blogs Sheryl is touring right now.
This post is part of the July I Can Read Carnival. Read more posts in this carnival at In Need of Chocolate.
