Bookmaking With Kids

Unbelievably, today is the start of the 2010–2011 school year in the San Francisco public schools. You probably can tell by my choice of adverb that I hail from a time and place where school began after Labor Day and ended in late June. But not here.

The school district’s new schedule welcomes kids back three full weeks before Labor Day and dismisses them before Memorial Day. And as a cost-cutting measure there are four “furlough” days—no work, no pay for teachers and no classes for kids—on November 1st, February 4th, March 25th and April 25th.

So what do the dolls* pictured above have to do with the new school year?

They’re little folk art toys from Burma, called Pyit Taing Taung. The words literally mean “to throw … every time … to stand up.” And indeed, when you toss the dolls, they immediately right themselves.

In other words: May you always land on your feet every time life lets you down.

And that’s my wish, for all of you at the start of a new school year.

*Regular readers of Bookmaking With Kids may recognize these dolls from a post last summer. They were a gift from Rosanna, a kindergarten teacher in Bangkok who spent a week making books at our 2009 Summer Camp. Like books, these dolls are gifts that keep on giving. So thanks again, Rosanna.

Every so often I look at the statistics about who uses this blog and I’m often surprised and pleased by discoveries to be found in the data.

My biggest kick of late was finding Bookmaking With Kids as a featured resource on a Czech blog! Scroll down and you’ll see me listed in the righthand column. And every time I post an entry, an updated blurb appears.*

I also discovered recent posts about Bookmaking With Kids on ABC Literacy Fun, Let’s Explore, TeachersFirst.com, and Kim & Karen: 2 Soul Sisters, among others. There are references to Bookmaking With Kids on The Cornerstone and on The R Teacher. And my blog appears as a resource at Wonder Farm, Playful Learning, Classroom Publishing, Kindergarten Chronicles, ESL Sites for Elementary Teachers, Kindergarten Community, Montessori Teacher Training, The Artful Parent and elsewhere.

*How’d I know this blog is written in Czech? I didn’t, but Google Translate did. You just enter some text you want to translate, it automatically detects the language and instantly supplies a (somewhat sketchy) translation.

It’s that time when school bulletin boards are denuded and backpacks come home stuffed with evidence of the year’s activities—artwork, reports, stories, charts, projects and more. No one has room to keep all that stuff, year after year. But I hope parents will keep at least a few things, especially handwritten things.

That way, you can indulge in rainy-day fun like …

• Turning artwork into holiday wrapping paper

• Reminding a 20-year-old headed to her first opera how she reacted to the symphony at age 8

• Marveling at the transformation of a child’s signature from preschool to college

What have you kept from your kids’ school days?

Thanks to Susan at Green Chair Press for passing along this nifty pledge:

We support the printed word in all its forms: newspapers, magazines, and of course books. We think reading on computers or phones or whatever is fine, but it cannot replace the experience of reading words printed on paper. We pledge to continue reading the printed word in the digital era and beyond.

The logo and words, available from this web site, have been making the rounds on the web. One of my favorite sightings was on a blog called Mrs. Fischer’s English Classes. A teacher of 9th and 10th grade English, Mrs. Fischer offers a lovely variation:

I hereby pledge to read the printed word. I pledge to hold books in my hand, to visit public libraries, to flip tangible pages, to read for pleasure and imagination, to pause from my reading to tilt my head heavenward to consider what information I have just absorbed.

Here’s hoping you, too, will share the link with all your book-loving students, friends, colleagues and other kindred souls.

It’s easy to cut a door (or two) into a single-sheet book. Just one snip up from the bottom edge, a perpen-
dicular cut, and a fold. Once kids have a door, they invariably want a window, too. But how do they start cutting—neatly—without ramming the tip of their scissors through their paper?

The trick is to punch a hole as a starting point for the scissors!

It’s easiest if kids lightly draw their window(s) first, punch somewhere along that line (with a hand-held or a two-hole punch) and then cut out the rectangle.

Many thanks to c.j. grossman for showing me this technique.

These little folk art toys from Burma are called Pyit Taing Taung and they were a sweet and unexpected thank-you gift from Rosanna, a kindergarten teacher in Bangkok who spent a week making books at our Summer Camp.

The words literally mean “to throw … every time … to stand up” and indeed, when you toss the dolls, they immediately right themselves.

“Here is my wish for you and your work,” Rosanna explained. “May you always land on your feet every time life lets you down.”

And that’s my wish, too, for all of you at the start of a new school year.