Valentine’s Day Giveaway

valentine-give-away.jpgI have a big boxful of bookmaking goodies for Valentine’s Day—hot pink card stock (prefolded!), big red construction-
paper hearts, alphabet stickers, heart stickers (big, small, glittery, in a half-dozen colors), stickers with phrases (XXOO, Be Mine). And it can all be yours with a well-timed note!

Just email me, saying why you value making books with your students … or why you’d like to try bookmaking. I’ll choose a teacher or librarian at random and send out supplies for your classroom. All your kids will need, in addition, are glue sticks, high spirits and creativity.

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posted February 2nd, 2012 by Cathy, comments (0), CATEGORIES: Holidays, All ages

A Boost for Midwinter Spirits

stone-soup1.jpgMy mind was wandering … I was thinking about Stone Soup and how to celebrate the 65th anniversary of Marcia Brown’s classic. 65! Wow!

That made me think of the fun of making stone soup in the classroom. … That made me think of vegetables (I’m pining for fresh tomatoes). … And that reminded me of Rah, Rah, Radishes!, an award-winning book by April Pulley Sayre.

rah-rah-1.jpgThis photographic gem with its catchy rhymes is a perfect resource if you’re planning to make stone soup and want your 1st or 2nd graders to “audition” some vegetables that they might contribute. The rhymes are also great for preschoolers and kindergartners to chant out loud. (And if you’re in a colder clime and local vegetables are a dream, you may find it irresistible, too.)

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Another rhyme I particularly like:

Ask for asparagus. Pea pods, please. Thank you farmers. Thank you bees!

You’ll find a lovely review of Rah, Rah, Radishes! on Children’s Book-A-Day Almanac, which is also celebrating an anniversary this month, its first.

Thank you, April Sayre. I’m looking forward to the follow-up book, Go, Go, Grapes, coming out in May.

posted January 30th, 2012 by Cathy, comments (0), CATEGORIES: Kindergarten, Children's Literature, 2nd grade, 1st grade

Happy Birthday, Lewis Carroll!

corrected-word-ladder.jpgIn honor of Lewis Carroll’s 180th birthday tomorrow, I’ve created a single-sheet booklet featuring a stellar word game that he invented called Doublets. It’s fun, it’s fiendish, it’s addictive.

Doublets involves transforming a given word into another by changing one letter at a time, making a real word at each link in the chain. The illustration to the left, by Gregory Nemec, offers a witty example, showing how an APE evolves into MAN, with four links in the chain:
ape–apt–opt–oat–mat–man.

Hundreds of other such transformations are possible, and the booklet pictured below features six: MORE-LESS, COLD-WARM, HEAD-TAIL, PIG-STY, HAND-FOOT, and WET-DRY. To make the booklet, print this PDF double-sided on letter paper and fold into a basic accordion following the directions for Book #1 in this instruction sheet. (Try not to peek at the answers—printed in tiny, tiny type—on the concealed part of the booklet.)

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A Google search will yield lots of sites with other doublets for kids (and adults) to solve. At this link you can read both Carroll’s article in the March 1879 issue of Vanity Fair magazine, in which he introduced the game, as well as the text of the book, Doublets: A Word-Puzzle, that he published later that year. Martin Gardner’s article, Word Ladders: Lewis Carroll’s Doublets, is a good overview. It appeared in the November 1994 issue of Math Horizons and is the source of the illustration reproduced above and in the single-sheet booklet.

Gregory Nemec’s illustration is reproduced here with the permission of the artist.

posted January 26th, 2012 by Cathy, comments (0), CATEGORIES: Words & Wordplay, 9th-12th grade, 6th-8th grade, 5th grade

And the Winner Is …

Congratulations to Amy, the winner of the Chinese New Year dragon book give-away.

Writing from Riverside, CA, Amy says she loves “making books with kids! I teach my own kids bookmaking (I homeschool some of them) and volunteered to teach a book to my daughter’s 4th grade class this year as well. Her teacher was very excited about the prospect and I will be going in this Spring to teach. If I won the giveaway, I could teach them two classes!”

Good luck with the project, Amy. And please email pix to share once the kids have made their books.

posted January 23rd, 2012 by Cathy, comments (0), CATEGORIES: Holidays, 5th grade, 4th grade, 3rd grade, 2nd grade

Popcorn “Book” and More on Pinterest

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pinterest_logo.jpgI posted about making popcorn boxes/books just this Monday, and a day later a reader had already snagged my photo of the project and added it to her pinboard over on Pinterest. (With credit to Bookmaking With Kids, thank you very much.)

In fact, I see Pinterest a lot these days when I check on the traffic this blog gets. The picture above shows just of few of the more than 200 (!) Bookmaking With Kids projects currently up on various pinboards. I’m really glad that web visitors have a new way of finding out about making books with kids and about my blog.

Does everybody know what I’m talking about? Do you know the words pins and pinboards and Pinterest?

Pinterest is a social network of virtual pinboards (think bulletin boards with pizzazz) where people pin (post) images they find on the web to pinboards of their own, organize them by topic, and follow pinboards of other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests. There are pinboards devoted to healthy eating, dogs, biking, books, remodeling, quilts … you name it. Search the grade you teach, for instance, or art projects, a favorite children’s author, topics coming up in your curriculum, any topic connected with kids, and you’ll instantly have hundreds of pins to browse.

You can also click your way back to the place an image originated, especially helpful when you’re looking for projects with templates and instructions.

But keep an eye on the time—once you start browsing Pinterest hours can pass before you finish!

posted January 19th, 2012 by Cathy, comments (3), CATEGORIES: Links We Like, All ages

Heads Up: National Popcorn Day

Thursday January 19th is National Popcorn Day. This goofy “holiday” can lend itself to all manner of explorations—social studies, science, math, reading. And to help your class celebrate, here’s a festive project. It’s a fold-up popcorn box that I’m willing to call a book … provided kids write something on one or more of its panels.

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The template is designed for 11×17 paper, because that produces a (small) movie-size box and provides a decent footprint for writing. I’ve hand-written a fun fact on my box: The oldest ears of popcorn, dating back 5,600 years, were found in the Bat Cave of New Mexico. Text-weight paper works fine, though a heavier weight would make the box a bit sturdier. The instructions are printed right on the template.

Popcorn facts, science experiments and math activities abound on the web. And for 1st and 2nd graders, don’t forget to share Tomie de Paola’s The Popcorn Book.

Enjoy!

posted January 16th, 2012 by Cathy, comments (0), CATEGORIES: Holidays, Science, Social Studies, 5th grade, 4th grade, 1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade, Math

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