Search results matching tags 'art' and 'reading'

All Things MUD Books + Art Projects

Anonymous — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 10:00:00 GMT

APRIL SHOWERS BRING “MUD!”

It is that time of the year when I watch the plants poke their little heads through the damp, cold, muddy earth. Every child should have the chance to see this spring event. They should be able to predict:

what will happen as the flowers grow

what color will they be
what kind of flower is it (daisy, tulip, etc.)
how does it smells.

Invite children to make a flower garden using a pop bottle, paper plate and paint. Invite the children to pick their colors and then give me brushes and paint to make the stems, leaves, and soil for their flowers. They can add any touches like the sun, butterflies, birds, rain or whatever their imaginations can conjure up.

As April showers fill our world with mud it is great fun to get mud from a familiar area for the children and invite them to finger paint with the mud.Talk about how the mud feels, smells and who lives in the mud. This is always an opportunity to talk to the children about WORMS

PLANTING

When a project like MUD, turns the conversation to another topic such as worms, seize the moment and find a good book.

Enjoy the beauty of spring as each day brings more color and experiences outdoors. Visit me *** www.storytellin.com, Facebook and check out PrekandKsharing EEE!

Mary Jo Huff

Author, Storyteller, Puppeteer

www.storytellin.com

Learning how to read with speech bubbles

Anonymous — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 15:02:14 GMT

My daughter is interested in learning how to read so I’m always looking for ways to add words in to our play. She enjoys reading books, but she’s still at the stage where that can feel like hard work sometimes. Adding words into our play gives her lots of opportunities to practice reading but it feels much . . . → Read More: Learning how to read with speech bubbles

The post Learning how to read with speech bubbles appeared first on NurtureStore.

Printables Galore for Educators

Anonymous — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 02:28:00 GMT

Are you looking for some ways to splash FUN into your school day? Education.com is the answer! They have thousands of printables for every grade level and subject area.

Warning: This is a teacher's dream site so make sure you have lots of ink on hand and your printer is ready to go! You may get lost in the hours of downloading and printing like we did!

You can choose to purchase top quality workbooks like these below

or you can print FREE individual worksheets,

games,

crafts,

board games,

invitations,

and we could go on and on but you'll have to hop on over and check out this incredible site for yourself.

Make sure to see the awesome feature that allows you to download multiple worksheets at once. This feature totally rocks!

You can also create your very own workbooks, too! {Click Here} for more information on this great feature.

Enjoy!

Teaching Children to Draw

Anonymous — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 12:24:00 GMT

Hello Pk+K Sharing blogging friends! My name is April Larremore but in the blogging world you may know me better as “Chalk Talk”. I’m thrilled to have been asked to stop by as a guest blogger today.

Wanting to stay in line with the “artsy” feel of Hello Pk+K Sharing, I decided to share my thoughts on the importance of teaching young children how to draw.

So... with crayons, markers, and paints in hand, keep reading as I share about ways to get your kids talking, drawing, and writing in the early childhood classroom.

Typically drawing is not honored or valued in the same way that the written word is. This was true in my own kindergarten classroom up until several years ago when I began to see the connection between the details students included in their drawings and the amount of detail they included in their writing. As I began to invest small pockets of instructional time teaching my students how to draw, it was exciting to see how children who were adding more detail to their drawings were also adding more details and information in their writing. Believing that for young children drawing is writing I realized the importance of providing my students with the information they needed to draw well, just as I was doing with my writing instruction.

In their book, Talking, Drawing, and Writing: Lessons for Our Youngest Writers, Martha Horn and Mary Ellen Giacobbe write “Because drawing is writing for young children, providing opportunities and guidance in drawing helps children to learn to use one’s eyes to see more intensely. And in that intense looking they have the opportunity to come to know something better and thus to represent it on paper the best that they can, at first through their drawings and over time through their words.”

Believing that this is true, I started to spend more time teaching my students how to draw while also pointing out the illustrations and details in our class read-alouds.

Here are the steps I took to teach my kids how to draw with detail:

At the beginning of the school year, I guided students step-by-step through all of their drawings. In order to learn to do something well you have to do it a lot, so we didn’t just draw faces, we drew lots of faces. We didn’t just draw ourselves, we drew ourselves often, and we didn’t just draw other people we practiced it daily.

I provided my students with lots of time and opportunities for drawing throughout the day and across the curriculum. We drew in response to read-alouds, for graphs and thinking maps, and when making class books.

I started by having children draw about what they know well-themselves. We drew self-portraits at least one time every day in the first couple of months of the school year. I directed students through their drawings one-step-at-time and I taught them how to use basic 2-D shapes to draw themselves.

At first, I gave students small sheets of white or manila paper. Early on I did not want students to focus on the background, setting, or other characters so I made the paper smaller. Over time, I increased the size of the paper and moved my students into adding background elements to their pictures.

When drawing, I started with the child’s head and worked my way down always modeling for students what to draw and where to place that body part on their paper. For example, I drew my head then had the kids draw their head.

I taught my students to draw body parts based on basic shapes. For example: head (circle), shirt and pants (rectangles), neck (rectangle), shoes and hands (ovals), skirts (triangles), arms (rectangles), etc.

Once I saw students could draw themselves well and with lots of detail, we started to draw other people, animals, and buildings. We practiced drawing characters in a variety of ways such as from the side, from the back, and in action. We also practiced drawing people with different facial expressions and displaying different emotions.

As my students’ drawing skills grew, I moved away from the step-by-step model and begin to provide them with quick pencil sketches for them to look at. I no longer had students all draw the same picture at the same time. They decided what they wanted in their picture and if they were unsure how to draw it, they asked for a sketch. My sketches were black and white line drawings made from shapes that I quickly drew on pieces of scratch paper.

Once we moved to drawing backgrounds in our pictures, I taught my students that they needed to be specific in the information they included in their picture- that good drawings and good writing are built on accurate pieces of information. For example: rainbows, hearts, and flowers do not belong in drawings about a trip to the zoo, a birthday party, or a family holiday celebration.

As my students drew, I assessed their drawings to see what they needed to help make their drawings better. Then I created mini-drawing lessons around these findings. I used read-alouds to teach students about the craft of drawing.

My students started the year drawing basic people like the one on the left and ended the year drawing detailed people, characters, settings, and animals like the picture on the right.

I got students talking about their drawings through whole group discussion, partner talking, and share time. This is an important piece of the drawing process. Talking and sharing honors who they are, helps children learn from each other, acknowledges that talking plays and important role in drawing and writing, and helps children to learn the element of the craft before actually putting it on paper.

Basically, I used lots of repetition, step-by-step examples, and a gradual release model for teaching drawing in my classroom. Try it out in your own classroom and I think you will be amazed at how well it works. If you have more questions about how I taught drawing or how drawing with details carries over to writing, feel free to email me at april.larremore@gpisd.org.

Happy Drawing!

Chalk Talk

The Professor Garfield website is a comprehensive free website...

Anonymous — Fri, 27 May 2011 01:35:41 GMT

The Professor Garfield website is a comprehensive free website for children, primarily devoted to literacy.

“Through the enormous popularity of Garfield the Cat created by Jim Davis, and the reputation of Ball State University, our mission is to inspire and delight children––to tickle their imaginations as they develop a love of reading and other areas of knowledge.”

I really like this site and my students do too. There are lots of neat interactives and games for kids to discover with many reading and writing opportunities. The site is totally engaging and educational. Creativity is also incorporated into the site.

Make sure you check out the Teacher’s Lounge because it has great info on how to use the site. I had never visited it before until recently. I found that there are printables, instructional materials and links, and even resources for students with learning disabilities. Teacher’s Lounge is very useful.

Utah Education Network is an excellent source for interactives...

Anonymous — Tue, 24 May 2011 11:17:45 GMT

Utah Education Network is an excellent source for interactives and games K-12.

#elemchat #spedchat

They host a wide variety of subjects and the site is very well organized.

Choose your levels below.

K-2

3-6

7-12

(1500+) Ideas to Inspire is a fabulous collection coming from...

Anonymous — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 09:54:38 GMT

(1500+) Ideas to Inspire is a fabulous collection coming from Teaching Ideas (one of my favorites). It features four categories…descriptions from Ideas to Inspire

Curriculum ideas:Providing ideas and resources, linked to specific curriculum areas.
Interesting ways to use ICT hardware in the classroom: These presentations focus on one particular ICT hardware tool and suggest ways of using that tool in your classroom
Interesting ways to use ICT software and online tools:Another set of ‘Interesting Ways’ presentations which share classroom uses for a range of software and online tools.
Other collaborative presentations: This section contains even more collaborative presentations, covering a range of topics.. Techy Tips, Inspiring Youtube videos, Games to support learning and more…

Mighty Books has many free online books that are very charming...

Anonymous — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 12:46:46 GMT

Mighty Books has many free online books that are very charming and really entertaining. The books have both audio and text. I just listened to How Mona Lisa Got her Smile and know students would really enjoy it. They have several really nice books that are art and music related as well as other subjects too.

Screenshot

To access their “hundreds” of books the description rate is $24.95 per classroom. This site would help make a fantastic listening/reading center. If the quality of the books is the same as the free ones I definitely think it is more than worth the price.

Check it out and see what you think.

Another great find via @marynabadenhors. If you don’t follow her on twitter you should. She always finds and shares the best resources.

Check out my new LiveBinder ”Educational Game Sites for...

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 01:59:33 GMT

Check out my new LiveBinder ”Educational Game Sites for Kids”. More than 30 sites have been added.

Just Kids Games is one of the sites I have added to this LiveBinder. It is a site with educational games that focus on math, science, reading and the environment. They are presented in a free and safe environment for kids to enjoy. The games are bright and colorful, sure to attract your student’s attention. There is a nice array of games to choose from. Subject covered and grade level appear below each game.

Below is a screenshot of some of their games.

Below is a screenshot of one of their games focusing on computers 4th grade level.