For both of my children, I've enjoyed volunteering in their elementary schools through the years. One of the second grade volunteer activities that I do is publishing the work written by the children. Each story is a multi-phase project and parent volunteers are a necessary part of the process:
The children write their stories.
They then review and polish the stories with their teachers.
A parent is then needed to type the story, (either at home or at school), and send it back to the school, (either printed or via e-mail to the child's teacher.)
The teacher will again proof-read the story with the child. If changes are needed, a request will be sent home for revisions. If no changes are needed, the child will illustrate their masterpieces.
Finally the illustrated stories are bound (by another parent volunteer...)
It is the goal of the school to have each second grade student have a book published by Young Author's Day in the spring.
It is a wonderful educational activity for the children (on so many levels) and the pride that radiates from their faces to have their own published book is priceless. As a parent, I know first hand, that those little books are "keepers."
Sometimes parents shy away from volunteering to publish because they have trouble with the formatting process. I have created Word templates that you can download to your computer to eliminate this problem.
When you click on any of the buttons below, you will have the option to open or save the files. I'd recommend that you save them to your desktop if you use Intenet Explorer. The "Using the templates..." button will give you a brief set of instructions on finishing and formatting the stories.
My apologies to those who don't have Word...
Below is the sheet that will come home with each hand-written story... As a typer, all you need to focus on is the top half. You'll type the format that's circled, using the corresponding template that you can download by clicking on the buttons above:
Visiting Artist at Brewster School...
In Springtime, 2008, I was invited to share my pysanka with the first graders at Brewster School in Durham, CT as a visiting artist as part of Brewster's One World Celebration in their MAGIC progam (Music & Art Grow in Children integrated art program).
I presented the techniques of making pysanky and then passed around the tools and finished eggs so that each child could touch and experience these little treasures for themselves. After the presentation, the children were able to make their own eggs which were then displayed at the annual art show. The children were amazing and their eggs came out beautifully!
Ruth Beames, the wonderfully creative art teacher at Brewster, came up with a modified technique that was safe for little hands. Here are some pictures from the show:
If your device does not support Pictobrowser, you may see the pictures at Flickr: "Pysanka" set. (More on my eggs and how to do them here... I'm setting up a page for pysanka!)
