30 Day Creative Challenge

by Joan Waites

The new school year has officially started, and classrooms are buzzing again!

A fun way to get the creativity flowing after the summer break is to initiate a 30 day creative challenge for your students.

Using 5x7 index cards (or other small pieces of paper), pick a simple one word prompt for children to do a quick drawing or doodle. Emphasize that the drawings don’t have to be realistic; they can be funny, whimsical or anthropomorphized. On the back side of the paper, have students do a short writing exercise. For example, using the word “paintbrush,” have students draw a paintbrush and then on the back of the drawing either describe the object using the five senses, write a poem about the object, or turn the object  into a character for a story and list character traits. 

Do this every day for 30 days allowing about 10-15 minutes per day. At the end of the 30 days, have students look over their collection of challenges. Have them pick out their favorite drawings and creative writing. Ask students to expand these simple exercises into a short story or picture book. These 30 day challenges can be kept in an envelope and used throughout the year as inspiration for other artistic works or writing assignments.

Happy September!

www.joanwaites.com

LET ART INSPIRE WORDS

by Karen Leggett Abouraya

During a recent visit to a Van Gogh exhibit with my young adult daughter, we listened to a cell phone description of the technical differences among the artist’s numerous paintings of a postman. Then we picked up a pamphlet describing the friendship Van Gogh enjoyed with the postman Joseph Roulin and his wife. “That’s what’s important to know!” proclaimed my daughter, who promptly bought the Washington, D.C., subway card displaying Van Gogh’s postman.

So why not let a work of art inspire youngsters to write their own stories?

Find paintings in a local museum or art gallery, online or in an art history book. Ask children to look at a painting with several questions in mind as they imagine their story:

-     who are the people in the painting?

-     how are they related or connected to each other?

-     what were they doing just before the painter fixed them on the canvas? what will they do next?

-     is the weather or atmosphere in the painting important to your story - is it a bright sunny day or a spooky, stormy night?

-     does the story have a happy ending or is there mystery or sadness?

If children choose a landscape or building, they can create characters to fill the space. Or children can read an artist biography and then write their story.  Two of this year’s Caldecott Honor books are biographies of artists - The Noisy Paint Box: The Colors and Sounds of Kandinsky’s Abstract Art by Barb Rosenstock, illustrated by Mary Grandpré and Yuyi Morales’ Viva Frida. In the Noisy Paint Box we read how Vasya Kandinsky saw “Thundering arches of aqua and ebony, with shrill points of cobalt and saffron…Vasya heard the colors singing…and saw the music dancing.” With those noisy colors in mind, what words and stories could be inspired by Kandinsky’s Two Ovals or White Zig Zag?

 http://childrensbookguild.org/karen-leggett-abouraya

Writing in Monet's Garden

by Joan Waites

Early summer has offically arrived, and flowers everywhere are in full bloom. When thinking about art and writing exercises for this time of year,  the life and work of Claude Monet is the perfect inspiration.

Start a lesson or project  by reading one of the many picture books based on the life of Claude Monet. Three books that I recommend are:

Once Upon a Lilly Pad-Froggy Love in Monet’s Garden  by Joan Sweeny, illustrated by Kathleen Fain

Charlotte in Giverny  by Joan MacPhail Knight, illustrated by Melissa Sweet

The Magical Garden of Claude Monet by Laurence Anholt

For an art exercise, ask children to pick out one specific item to draw or paint from a Monet painting. This can be a single flower or group of flowers, a tree, or even the bridge at Giverny. In the example picture shown here, students were asked to draw one large lily in a pond using light colored oil pastels, (white, yellow, green, pink and light blue) on watercolor paper. Next, students brushed various shades of blue and green watercolor over the oil pastel for a beautiful resist effect.

For a writing exercise, ask students to choose an animal that might live in Monet’s garden at Giverny--a bird, frog, butterfly, fish or even a lady bug. Have that animal or insect describe what they see in the garden, based on their unique perspective. Explain to the students that a bird would have a different observational point of view than a fish in the pond.  Also include the animal’s observations of the painter as he arrives each day to paint his surroundings.

Happy summer!

www.joanwaites.com

MENTOR TEXTS AND PLAYGROUND FUN

by Jacqueline Jules

At the last NCTE conference, I had the privilege of serving as one of the roundtable leaders for a session sponsored by the Children’s Literature Assembly called “Reading Poetry Across the Curriculum.” In preparation for my discussion, I came across some terrific mentor texts that could be used in a combination of ways in your writing workshop classroom.

The Fastest Game on Two Feet and Other Poems About How Sports Began by Alice Low is a delightful combination of history, poetry, and illustration. Many people know that basketball was first played with peach baskets hung on the wall. But did you know that some say soccer began as a kicking game with a skull found on an English battlefield? Alice Low introduces the history of popular sports with a nonfiction paragraph followed by a beautifully illustrated rhyming poem. Most students have a favorite sport and should be naturally curious about its history. Read selections from The Fastest Game on Two Feet to inspire your class to research the origin of a sport. Afterwards, they can write about it in both nonfiction form and poetry, just as the book models. Students might also enjoy creating timelines, also included in this book. This would make a good class project with each student contributing an illustrated page.

A Stick is an Excellent Thing by Marilyn Singer extols the joys of outdoor and imaginative play. Bring in a stick and ask students to brainstorm all the games it could be used for. The poem suggests using the stick as a scepter for a king or a magic wand. This book also includes poems on favorite pastimes like hopscotch, swinging, blowing bubbles, making pretend soup, hide-and-seek, and jump rope. Each poem does an amazing job of portraying the activity, making them terrific models of description.

Joy in Mudville by Bob Raczka provides a great opportunity to compare and contrast. This illustrated poem is a sequel to Ernest Thayer’s famous “Casey at the Bat” reprinted at the end of the book. After reading Joy in Mudville, your class can discuss how Raczka took a well-known story and continued it with a new character and different ending. Students can write their own story about Mudville and a sport of their choice. Or you could do it as a class writing project.

Students are interested in sports. They love playground time. Using texts that celebrate what kids enjoy doing most is a sure-fire way to provide high interest reading and inspiration for writing.

The handouts for CLA Master Class "Poetry Across the Curriculum" session at NCTE are posted online. I hope you'll check out these great resources. In addition to information about Poetry and Sports, there are poetry handouts for Science, Math, Social Studies, and Art.  

www.jacquelinejules.com

Teaching the Elements of Art with Picture Books

by Joan Waites

In my last blog post, I wrote about using picture books in the classroom as a supplemental way to teach art history. Using this same approach, young students can also be introduced to the seven elements of art using the illustrations in a picture book. Each illustrator brings their own unique style and uses these elements in different ways to convey the story in pictures. The seven elements of art are:

Illustration by Joan Waites
www.joanwaites.com

Line

Shape

Color

Value

Form

Texture

Space

Looking at the illustrations in a picture book, ask students to comment on the art using these seven elements, asking the following questions:

Line: Is the line used to draw the objects or setting thin? Thick? Angular or curvy?

Shape: Are the basic shapes large or small? Organic or geometric?

Color: Are the colors used warm or cool? Monochromatic?

Value: Are the colors used darker or lighter in shade?

Form: Are the figures and setting flat or more 3-D looking?

Texture: Do the objects in the picture appear rough? Smooth? Shiny?

Space: Do the objects in the illustrations look like they are closer to the reader? Farther away?

Have students study two picture books and compare and contrast how the illustrator incorporated these seven elements. Next, have students draw an illustration based on their favorite picture book or story. Using the seven elements as a guide, encourage students to incorporate as many of them into their work as possible. Bonus points for those students who incorporate all seven!

www.joanwaites.com

VISUAL LITERACY REDUX

by Mary Quattlebaum

Joan Waites’s  8/12/12 blog post on Visual Literacy got me thinking about enhancing visual literacy for older kids.  Joan spoke of the playful (and important) learning opportunities surrounding picture books and offered two intriguing classroom prompts.  (These can be helpful for adults interested in writing for kids as well as youngsters in school.)

Alas, as students move into middle school, opportunities to enhance visual literacy tend to diminish.  Budget cuts often target in-school art programs and art teachers first, and classroom teachers may lack the training and time to expose children to art.  And face it, self-conscious middle schoolers may scoff at picture books as being “for babies.”

Enter Jennifer Holm’s two collage-novels, perfect for 5^th-8^th graders.  Middle School Is Worse Than Meatloaf and Eighth Grade Is Making Me Sick, both brilliantly illustrated by Elicia Castaldi (Random House, 2007 and 2012, respectively) follow Ginny Davis’s 7^th and 8^th grade years in suburban Pennsylvania.  Author and illustrator create the “stuff” of Ginny’s life—doodles, refrigerator notes, bank statements, text messages, doctor’s reports, invitations and school assignments—and arrange these pieces and images to tell the story of Ginny’s relationship with her practical mom, troublesome older brother and new stepdad.  They also chronicle dramas with braces, cute boys and a BFF, with one plot thread--the family’s worsening financial situation, with the stepdad “downsized” out of a job—feeling especially believable in the current economic climate.  Ginny’s fresh, funny “everygirl” voice makes her easy to relate to as do these written fragments of her life, so similar to those of today’s students.

To have students attend to and write with a focus on visual imagery:

1.  Discuss the way that the images/fragments are put together to tell a story.  Ask students to list at least 15 different types of fragments (bank statements, refrigerator notes, Ginny’s poems, etc.)

2.  Have students bring in photos and written fragments from their own lives.  What do each of these things say and reveal about them? Ask them to create a self-portrait.

3.  Ask students to create a short visual story (at least 3 pages) in which they make up written fragments and use images cut from magazines.  Have them give their character a name, age, and particular interest or passion and then “tell” the story of a bad (or good) day in this character’s life.  (Students from middle school through college and adults can learn much about character development; showing, not telling; the importance of details; plot; structure; and visual imagery from this prompt.  Plus, it’s fun and helps students to relate writing to their real world.) 

www.maryquattlebaum.com