Tammy Garcia runs this great website about art journaling. If you don’t know how to get started or want to get inspired, go to Daisy Yellow. Tammy provides tons of ideas, tutorials and prompts. Here are two articles Art Journaling for Kids|Tweens|Teens and Art Journaling 101
Archive for the ‘children’ Category
art journaling for kids
April 18, 2014handmade tribal pictogram book
April 8, 2014
Do! A Minimalist Handmade Pictogram Book in the Style of Indian Tribal Art
This book published by Tara Books combines so many things I am fond of such as 1) Indian tribal painting, 2) children’s books, 3) pictograms, 4) screen printing – all wrapped into one. So I just added a new category to my blog: a wish list!
Tara is an Indian publisher producing beautiful handmade books. Watch the hand production process of this book here:
via Brain Pickings.
illustrations by Alain Gree
April 5, 2014
I am pretty sure as a child I used to have some books illustrated by Alain Gree, or even played with this memory game. I wished I could track them down. Looking at them just makes me happy. Read more here on Jane Foster Blog and about reprints in the Anorak magazine on grainedit.
mail art memory map
April 3, 2014
the forest of signs
April 1, 2014
oh yeah!
August 25, 2012
a river of words
August 24, 2012
Poetry River Craft | Made by Joel.
And many more lovely and inspiring ideas for making simple toys, printables and more by Joel.
mr printable
August 18, 2012
Printable Quotes Posters | Mr Printables.
Mr Printable offers a lovely range of mostly free (!) printable materials for children, flash cards, alphabet posters, maps. games, coloring pages, posters, paper dolls, and a small printable world to make out of paper. Very nicely designed and some very original ideas. I like these two posters too.
nostalgic media and mediated forms of nostalgia
August 17, 2012
Hey, I did not know that there used to be a superhero, ahem, space ranger called Rocky Jones with television show, comics, merchandizing and all. Makes me proud to be a Jones myself. :-)
Check out the squeaky clean Space Ranger Code: I pledge
- to obey my parents at all times
- to be kind an courteous to all
- to be brave in the course of freedom, to help the weak
- to obey the law at all times
- to grow up clean in mind, strong in body
Children actually bought this? How times have changed.
Which reminds me of the conference “Flashbacks – nostalgic media and mediated forms of nostalgia” coming up on 13-14 September 2012 in Basel, Switzerland. The preliminary program is here http://flashbacks2012.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/flashbacks_program3.pdf*
book shelter
August 15, 2012
The Bibliobarn’s Bibliobargains!
I love this idea. In the small village in Lower Austria where I like to spend the summer, there is a small disused bus shelter made of wood. I have been wondering if it could be turned into something like that – a reading shelter for the village kids, a stop for book crossing. But then it only makes sense if people use it. And that would mean more people passing through, but I like that it is so quiet here. And who would make sure it is not vandalized? Hmmm.
hand lettering
August 13, 2012
Here is another creative project for children, creating illustrations fo all the letters of the alphabet, with handprints. The thumbnails are a bit small but if you click on the image they will enlarge a little bit more.
map monsters
August 12, 2012
Here are a great posting and detailed instructions regarding an educational project for children by Susan Cirigliano. The idea is to combine Geography, reading maps and art – through painting over maps.
“Learning Geography can become more fun when students are encouraged to add an artistic touch. Map Monsters is a wonderful cross-curricular activity that I do with my students that incorporates Geography, or reading maps and visual arts. After learning a particular geographic of an area of the world the children look for monsters hidden along the borders of the countries! Using whatever drawing tools are handy the monsters begin to climb out of the map! “
wonders of the modern world
August 12, 2012I have always been interested to find out more about Otto Neurath, creator of the international picture language Isotype (International System of Typographic Picture Education) and one of the fathers of is called visual communication today. He was a central member of the Vienna Circle of philosophers. Almost a century ago, in the 1920s he started developing ideas about visualizing social facts, such as statistics on labour and economy in order to make complex ideas about social economics more accessible to all. Read more about Isotype and Neurath here and here.
Like so many other talented Austrians in the 1930s and 40s he had to leave the country ultimately escaping to Britain. He collaborated with designer Marie Reidemeister, who later became his wife Marie Neurath. Just as with other coupes – Paul and Ann Rand and Charles and Ray Eames come to mind – this seems to have been a very creative relationship. After Otto Neurath died in Oxford in 1945 Marie Neurath carried on with the work of the Isotype Institute. Otto Neurath started working on books for children in the 1940s, and the Isotype Institute under Marie Neurath produced many more books for children, notably several series of informational children’s books such as ‘Visual history of mankind’, ‘Wonders of the modern world’, ‘Visual science’, ‘The wonder world of nature’ and ‘They lived like this’. Marie Neurath’s work shows how Isotype, language and presentation can work together in reducing complexity in order to clearly comunicate ideas to children, putting ideas for visual education into practice. All materials of the Isotype Institute are now housed by Department of Typography & Graphic Communication, University of Reading.
“The books show Marie Neurath’s remarkable contributions: her ability to identify unusual relationships between things and ideas, and to analyze and then synthesize complex information into bite-sized chunks. Her approach to making child-friendly visual explanations included teamwork, consultation with readers, and iteration between experts in a particular field and those making visual decisions.” Read more here.
Marie Neurath and the Isotype books.
Read also Austin Kleons blog post on The Simplest Expression of an Object.
icon poet
August 11, 2012
Icon Poet – Alle Geschichten dieser Welt | Slanted – Typo Weblog und Magazin.
36 cubes to use for storytelling or as creative writing prompt. Unfortunately they are not cheap. There are similar smaller sets available from Amazon, such as three different sets of Rory’s Story Cubes with nine cubes each.
kids against clip art
August 10, 2012
I was so pleased when I found this collection of NOT CLIP ART illustrations posted by maureencrosbie.
“Aren’t you sick of the overuse of Clip Art? I work in schools and have always thought that children’s illustration would make a better visual contribution to posters, newsletters and council and governmental publications. Help me convert. Add your contributions. And feel free to use these for yourself copyright free . Look up “Kids against Clip Art”.
Yes, I am absolutely sick of clipart, also as it is used in hundreds of worksheets for children, used especially in Germany and Austria, and shared online by many well-meaning teachers. I understand the desire and need to create your own teaching material, but high quality illustrations are important too!
The Flickr group “Kids against Clip Art” features lots of children’s drawings, but unfortunately not many are just simple b/w drawings which can be used for photocopiable teaching resources. I have been thinking about ways of creating better clip art as educational resource for a long time, just waiting for the right time making the ideas into proper project.
baby words
August 10, 2012
A simple and sweet idea: Rainer Hoffelner created a notebook with mostly blank pages to serve as “baby dictionary.” It is meant to be used by parents for tracking the development of their child’s language and recording original and funny expressions. It must be fun to read this book together with the child once she starts getting interested in reading and writing, talking about how much she has already learned. The child could then start noting down words by herself. Published by Langenscheidt, Germany’s most prominent publisher of dictionaries.
isotype & literacy learning box
August 10, 2012
Sometimes I create teaching materials for primary school children. Usually they are in German, so not very interesting for this blog here. But this picture domino can be understood and used by all people who know the story of Little Red Riding Hood. The domino follows the events in the fairy tale, based on the Grimm version. The idea is, that every child has to narrate the next bit of the story, before they put the next domino piece down. Sometimes essential details have to be filled in such as the wolf devouring grandma and the little girl, but these story elements will rarely be left out anyway. So it is an exercise in sequencing and story telling. But I think it could be fun for grown ups too.
The graphics used are mostly from http://www.thenounproject.com or in the public domain. These images have been designed in the tradition of ISOTYPE and other signs, which are forming an international visual language in their own right. (Think of the signage on airports or the Olympics.) The image of Red Riding Hood is by Emma Pelling and can be found among many other educational resources at http://www.earlylearninghq.org.uk.
I am very much interested in developing Isotype-like icons for children, to be used in the context of literacy, or rather for developing multimodal literacy. I believe that abstracted and well crafted icons can be a stepping stone to alphabetic reading, as the reader has to make inferences. They also could help to communicate very efficiently to children of all languages, for example, in games or websites or other places. Of course this is happening already to some extent – children learn to read emoticons, icons and symbols in contextual menus of games. But I am sure there is more to be achieved.
The pdf is in German. The last page is meant to be a cover for a DVD storage box. I have been thinking a long time about the most practical and efficient way to store and organize learning games in the classroom. I have come to the conclusion that empty DVD covers without the DVD tray are the most simple and elegant solution. They can be stored on a bookshelf, next to books or with other DVDs, so they can be associated with both books and games. This way they can be easily retrieved and put back to where they belong. They are cheap. The boxes shut tightly, so hopefully cards and small game tokens will not be lost too quickly. The instructions can be written on the back cover and as they are protected, they will not be lost or torn. Where appropriate, a booklet or a game plan can be included (often DVD covers have little clips to hold the booklet down). For example, the story of Red Riding Hood could be provided with this game.
I am happy to borrow, steal and promote good teaching ideas and ideas for classroom organization from wherever they come from. However, I claim to be the first to use DVD covers for literacy learning boxes! Here is the printable pdf. You are free to use it. CC: BY-NC-SA
alphabeasties
August 9, 2012
story mapping
August 8, 2012
type tales
August 7, 2012
In contrast to the previously posted rendition of Little Red Riding hood this one by Lauren Kaiseris entirely done with stunningly expressive lettering.
little red riding hood
August 6, 2012
Le Petit Chaperon Rouge via Little red riding hood (Warja Lavater, 1965)
This is a great take on the traditionale tale of Little Red Riding Hood by Warja Lavater. The story has been mapped out mainly with with simple geometrical shapes, providing a new – bird’s view – perspective.
word and image 