A Book for Persian New Year

Here's wonderful library project for the Persian New Year. I got an email from Cathy who was looking for a book project for children ages 6 to 11 to share the haft seen (7 elements) of the Norooz table setting. I suggested an Index Card Accordion with one page for a title and seven for the elements. Cathy kindly sent me pictures of the books and these comments.

I would like to share a few experiences. The majority who attended were Persian. A Japanese woman said this event was a good cultural learning experience. Her son proudly showed his book to me. In fact, the pics I sent you show his book on the Haft seen table. Two Persian children carefully and artfully assembled their books. I could sense kindred creative spirits with these two. I will say there was one negative comment made by a 8 year old Persian boy "This is boring". I noticed he left the packet untouched. I decided to share the bad with the good ;-)



Directions for an Index Card Accordion

Book Arts Tuesday/Herb Book-Giveaway

The herbs are abundant and fragrant this time of year. While the flowers are modest, the shape, texture, and colors of the leaves bring interest to the garden. This month's project, an index card accordion herbal, focuses on the leaves. The book is currently decorating a side table in the dining room and also can be used to identify herbs in the garden for novice gatherers.

To make the book, you can follow these directions for an Index Card Accordion Book.

For this book, I glued index cards to both sides. On the front are leaf prints. I placed a leaf face down on a stamp pad, then placed a piece of scrap paper over it and rubbed. After folding the scrap paper in half to avoid getting ink anywhere else, I gently placed the leaf face down on the card, covered it with scrap paper, and rubbed. On the back side I wrote the names in Latin and some plant information. I'm a big fan of Latin names and find that I learn best by writing things out.

You can see the complete book on flickr.

For more information on printing from nature:

The Nature Printing Society
Check out the Resource Center for a video about nature printing (good information but the images are small and don't work well at full screen) and written information. There's also a member's gallery, news of the annual workshop, and a printing guide book that looks great to purchase, THE ART OF PRINTING FROM NATURE: A Guidebook.

A pdf on Nature Printing with Children from Cornell Plantations.

Laura Donnelly Bethmann has written several books about nature printing. She has a new one coming out in September which looks like it may be an updated version of this one:


You can find another style of herbal book in this previous blog post.

GIVEAWAY!

In celebration of herbs, here's some lavender items—a small vial of lavender essential oil from Lavender Wind Farm on Whidbey Island, a lavender candle, and a little lavender weaving I made— and a small book to create your own herbal.

Leave a comment and you'll be entered into a random drawing. The drawing will close on Thursday at midnight.

Clouds Index Card Accordion Book

http://www.makingbooks.com/indexcard.shtml

Spring in New England is a wonderful time to look at the sky. While we hunger for warmth that has not yet arrived, we can take joy in the brightness of white clouds in a blue sky (except of course when it rains or snows). But of course the sky deserves our attention every day of the year. John Day, "Cloud Man", called clouds and cloudscapes the greatest free show on earth. Here's what poet David McCord said about the sky.


I used three strips cut from the side panels of a grocery bag and 12 index cards for the book. There are ten different types of clouds. I used the top card for the title and the bottom one for information about the Latin names. I colored the cards blue with the side of a crayon and cut the clouds from index cards and glued them on. The tie is a loop made from a plastic newspaper delivery bag.



BOOKS AND LINKS

The story of Luke Howard who gave the clouds the Latin classification names we use today is interspersed with Grace's monthly weather journal which is full of facts about the weather from how clouds are made to how to make a rain gauge. Lots of information presented in an engaging manner.


Beautiful paintings of clouds in the landscape by Thomas Locker accompanied by short poetic sentences. The book concludes with a visual guide to the clouds.

For Spacious Skies
In the early 80s, I listened every weekday afternoon to Music America with Ron Della Chiesa on WGBH in Boston. One of his guests was Jack Borden, who was then a local TV news reporter. He had started an organization called For Spacious Skies which grew out a TV piece he did. He stopped twenty people, shielded their eyes, and asked them what the sky looked like that day. Most people said something like "It's sunny" and no one could describe it in detail. The website has an NPR interview with Jack Borden, essays by him and teachers who have worked with For Spacious Skies, and links.

Cloudman.com
This website created by the late John Day, known as Cloud Man has a Gallery of Clouds, Mini Cloud Atlas, Ten Reasons To Look Up, and much more.

Cloud Concentration Matching Game

Forbidden Words Accordion Book

http://www.makingbooks.com/indexcard.shtml

When I was doing a poetry project with middle school kids last spring, I came across a poem with the word nice in it and cringed. I remembered that one of my children's teachers banned the use of the word in her classroom. While life would be way too exhausting if we always had to come with a creative and appropriate word every time we wanted to give a little positive acknowledgment, we certainly should avoid nice and other neutral and nondescript words in writing. This month's project is a book to keep track of forbidden words and come up with alternatives.

I made my book with just four pages instead of the 8 in the directions. I used one half of the side panel of a grocery bag for the accordion and pieces cut from a pancake mix box for the cards. I wanted to use the design on the box as a border so I wrote the words on cut pieces of paper (with writing on the other side) and glued them to the cards. You could also make a longer book to hang in the classroom with each student contributing a word.

LINKS

Word choice advice for writers: Forbidden words
Advice about avoiding overly used words in writing.
http://www.helium.com/items/418530-word-choice-advice-for-writers-forbidden-words

Wordy Wise
One teacher's take on forbidden words plus other ideas to expand vocabulary.
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/teaching_with_style/45695

Online Thesaurus
http://thesaurus.reference.com/

Flags Accordion Book

http://www.makingbooks.com/indexcard.shtml

This month's project was inspired by Flag Day which is June 14 in the US. It commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States in 1777. It got me thinking what thinking about what interesting objects flags are. My kids had a small book of flags from around the world and I used to love to look at it. The project uses the index card accordion book; the 3 x 5 cards are a perfect flag shape.

I made my flag book about my family heritage with a flag for each country of origin. Since there were four different countries, I used one accordion section and four cards. I used the side panel of a grocery bag cut in half the long way for the accordion. I used index cards for the pages but you could also cut recycled paper or cereal boxes to size. I glued another set of cards to the back for information about the flags: the meaning of the colors, when they were adopted. You can adapt your book to however many flags you are using. The accordion sections are in multiples of four pages. I think it is easiest to always make sections of four and cut off any extra.

Some other book ideas:
* History of the American Flag

* Flags of the Fifty States

* Countries of the World: countries could be chosen randomly or by region, language, or geography (countries with coastlines, countries with mountain ranges, etc.)

* Class or Family Book of Flags: Each person designs his or her own flag. You might want each person to make a large one for display and a smaller one to put in the book which would hold one from each.

LINKS
Evolution of the US Flag
http://www.united-states-flag.com/evolution-of-the-american-flag.html

Flags of the 50 States
http://www.netstate.com/state_flags.htm

Flags of the World
http://www.flags.net/

Good Flag, Bad Flag: How to Design a Great Flag
Vexillology is the study of the flags. This site from the North American Vexillological Association uses examples to illustrate the principles of flag design.
http://www.nava.org/Flag%20Design/GFBF/gfbf-1.htm

Flag Concentration Game
http://www.scottishlaw.org.uk/games/concentration.html