The Author's Fair 2014

The Old School Mondays kids have a long standing tradition of collaborative book writing--and the books we have made together and presented at the annual Author's Fair have been some of my kids' favorite projects!

This year we have two book projects going on, for anyone who would like to jump in and participate:  The Book of Months, and the "What Is It?" Book of Nature Riddles.  It is not too late for you and your kids to do either or both!

The Book of Months features your family traditions and rhythms over the course of one year. All you need is one illustration and one page of description for each month. As always, you modify the project as needed to fit your child's abilities, so there can be as much or as little writing and parental involvement as necessary.  Click on this link to read all the details for this project.

The Book of Nature Riddles is one page front and back; the front presents the riddle, and the back has the illustration and words that reveal the answer.  Click here to read all the details for this project. This project involves more parental guidance up front--but the process can be fun, and once they get the hang of it they might very well want to keep writing more!

(I recommend when you click on each project link that you read the posts from oldest to newest, so you can follow the logical progression more easily.)

If you would like to participate in the Book of Months, just jump on in to the fun!  All the info you need to make it happen is already up on the blog, except for the details about how to bind it, but that will come. You have more than 3 weeks for the project, and unless your children are uber-detailed and slightly obsessive illustrators (like mine are), that is plenty of time.  You are invited to bring your completed books to our April 28 Old School Monday gathering for show & tell!

If you would like to participate in the Book of Nature Riddles, please RSVP in the comments below, and I will then plan on us having a "book binding" activity for our April 28 Old School Monday (the Monday before the Author's Fair).  (I can also plan book binding for the Book of Months, if that is helpful--RSVP for that if you desire.)

Questions? Please ask them in the comments below so all may benefit from the discussion.

The Author's Fair wrap-up

Well, you could hear the crickets chirping in here after my last post about the Author's Fair!

I understand.  It was a busy Spring for most of us, and many of you intended to participate but then when the time came to do it you felt like you could not do one more thing.  I get that--I felt that way this Spring too!

So this year our group book ended up being a two-family collaboration.  And guess what?  It still turned out adorable, and was a big hit at the fair!  Read what my E.S. Terry sent me in an email after the fair, which another E.S. had sent to her:

The other E.S.'s family wrote:

We all went to the Authors' Fair yesterday, and the kids were quite excited that people had read their works and left comments.  We looked at some of the other books, and one was a book of riddles ending with "Who am I?"  The kids have been busy writing their own riddles last night and this morning!  M's I wrote into a tracing program, so I printed his riddles out with 'conventional spelling' : ) and we decided to use those for his copywork. 

Thank you for encouraging the kids to take part in the authors' fair!  Nothing else has come close to giving them the inspiration to write - both before and after the fair!

 

Now how cool is that?  Our book was inspiring other kids to go home and think and write!

 

This fun anecdote was just what I needed to confirm in my mind what I already thought we would do for next year's group project:  build the riddle book!  This means that we have TWO projects going on for the Author's Fair of 2014, and you have ALL the information you need right now, a year in advance, to be working on them! 

 

--The "What Is It?"  Book of Nature Riddles  (formerly called "Our Big Backyard") group project, where each child/family can submit one or more pages.

 

--The "Book of Months" family writing project.  You parents are the bosses of this project, but I have provided suggestions and guidelines, and we can have a party where we come together and share these the month before the Author's Fair if you like. 

 

So I encourage you interested families to start working on your Book of Months now, so your kids have plenty of time to really get into it if they want and you don't run up against the deadline next year and be frustrated.  It would be a great summer project!  But as always, these are just things you can do or not, depending upon what your kids needs and interests are. 

 

I have updated the labels for these two book projects so you can just click on the label "Book of Months" and it will take you to all those posts, etc.  : )

 

 

 

Author's Fair THIS Saturday--Final Details Here!

Last Monday we had our Old School Monday "book binding" party, where you and your kids could assemble their poems onto the book pages and be done.  Judging by the number of families who showed up, I am guessing this has been a very full season for most of you, as it has been for us, and either you decided not to participate in the group book project or you ran out of time to get your family's pages done before the party.  Either way, it's ok.  If you have not finished (or started!) your pages for our group book this year, but wish you had, you still have time.  Yes, it is down to the wire--the Author's Fair is this upcoming Saturday, May 4--but the pages are easy to do and I'll show you here how you can finish and still have them in our book at the fair, if you still wanted to participate. 

In the last post, I gave you the details for formatting and printing your riddle--but I am amending instructions because I found our poems looked best with approx. 20 point font boldface.  So that's a slightly larger font size than I said before.  If you use the smaller font size, no big deal.  But if you see this before you print out, great.

Also, minor detail that does not affect your work but which I wanted you to know:  my girls and I decided to change the title of the book.  We found in our riddle generating that while our riddles were celebrating the natural world, they were ending up all being very broad and not quite meeting the idea behind the title "Our Big Backyard."  So we are changing the title of the book to "What Is It?  A Book of Nature Riddles."  So as long as your child's riddle is about something in nature, it will work perfectly.

If you still want your kids to participate in the book project:

--Bring your child's riddle printed out and the riddle answer printed out on a separate page to the Ocean Grove table at the Author's fair no later than 10:00 a.m. 

(If you have multiple children making riddles, their answers can go on the same page, with plenty of spacing in between--you will be cutting them out, as you will see below.)

--Bring glue sticks.  You can assemble your child's page there at the fair and add it to our book.  I will have all the other supplies you will need to finish your page.  Please do not bring regular glue--it will not dry in time.  Tape might also work.

--In the past we have met at the Ocean Grove table and then given the kids a chance to present their book all together at the Author's Chair.  If we do so this year, we will be meeting at 10:40 a.m., with the goal of presenting the book at 11:00.  Those of you who want your kids to present the book at the Author's Chair, please RSVP to this post by leaving a comment.  If no one is interested, I'd like to know so I don't hang around the mall unnecessarily.  : )  If no one RSVP's, we will just pass on that this year.  

Questions or comments otherwise?  Please leave them in the comments too, so everyone may benefit from the answers.


Finally, here are my girls' pages, as examples of what the final pages will look like (click on the images to see them bigger):

The front side of each child's page will have the riddle, bordered with colored construction paper.  Notice the poem is offset to the right, to allow for the holes we will add to complete the "binding."

The back side of each child's page will have the answer and illustration. 

So as you read the book, each riddle's answer is revealed as you turn the page.

My girls had fun with these!  They used the online "riddle generator" interactive I linked earlier just as a brainstorming tool, and then came up with their own riddle styles.   You own child's riddle can be as elaborate or simple as you and he/she wants.

Special thanks to Kathy Oak and Lucy Hiatt, who generously donated some of their Ocean Grove funds to help purchase the papers needed for the Old School book projects last year and this year.  Thank you ladies so much!

Book "binding" party--NEXT Monday!

Ok, after a whirlwind Spring, culminating in the Abbey art show and STAR testing, I took a much needed mental Spring Break.  Only to realize, yesterday, that in doing so I neglected giving you all the final details about our Author's Fair book project this year, "Our Big Backyard." 

But I have a feeling most of you are like me, and are just now starting the project anyway. ; )  So if you have not started working on the project with your kids yet, it is not too late!  But, um, you'd better jump on it now, since we are scheduled to have our binding party NEXT Monday at the April Old School Monday gathering.  That gives you four days--so time to get busy! ; )

And please remember--this is meant to be a fun thing, not a huge hassle, so please keep that in mind as you help your kids with their pages.  The art may not be amazing (hey, that's what the Abbey art show was for) and the riddles may or may not make much sense.  ; )  But it's an opportunity for our kids to stretch their thinking, be creative, engage with words and ideas, and make art! 

If you have not already read the first posts about this year's project, please start here and here. 

Once you have read those, you know our theme and our writing style.  Now let's talk details of art and format:

The ART
--The art can be in any two-dimensional style and medium your child chooses!  I'm not going to direct my kids in a specific medium, but just encourage them to get out the markers and colored pencils.  For our family, this is not the time to try to get all fancy. 

--Your child's art must be made on a roughly 8" x 8" square.



The TEXT
--Please print out your child's riddle on a regular 8 1/2" x 11" piece of white typing paper. 

--The text should be centered.

--The text should be approximately 16-18 pt. font (whatever fits and looks good).

--Your child is welcome to choose the color and font style, but please use boldface.

--The answer to the riddle should be printed out exactly the same font style and size and boldface, but on a separate piece of the same kind of paper.

(If you have several children submitting pages, you are welcome to print their answers on one page, as long as you leave lots of room in between them, as we will be cutting them out on Monday when we assemble the books.)


Does this all make sense?  Am I forgetting something important?  If you have questions, please leave them in the comments to this post, so everyone may benefit from the answers. 

So, see you Monday, April 22 from 11-2 in the usual Vintage classrooms!  *And bring your supplies!  We will be using scissors, glue/gluesticks, and maybe pencils and markers.    

More on Book Project 2013: Our Big Backyard Writing

Ok, everybody.  I shared a few weeks back about our topic for this year's Author's Fair book project, Our Big Backyard.  Now I'm excited to tell you that I have settled on the writing style for the book--riddles! 

So each child/family who would like to participate in the project will come up with a topic--like redwoods, or sea stars, or the Sierra Nevadas, or constellations, whatever they are interested in or whatever you are already learning about as a family--and then they will write a riddle "poem" to accompany it. 

Best of all, I found a great interactive online that will help in the riddle-writing process! 

ReadWriteThink riddle interactive

Write your riddles using the interactive, and you will be set!

More details on the size of the art and how you should format your writing for the book will come in later posts. : )

Questions?  Please leave them here in the comments so that everyone may benefit from the discussion.

And now the Vintage Homeschool Kids' Book Project 2013: Our Big Backyard

If you read the last posts, you know we are starting the annual book project for 2014 a little early.  But that does not mean we are not doing a project for this year!  No, so many of you told me how much you and your kids enjoy this annual tradition of making a collaborative project and presenting it at the Author's Fair in May that I got up the gumption to do it again. ; ) (Seriously, though--thanks ladies for your encouragement. It is nice to know you are not just joining in the book projects because you feel like you would be a bad friend if you didn't, or because you would feel guilty or something.  No one ever has to participate, but I'm glad to know those of you who do actually are glad to do so. : )

So here's the project for this year, to be completed in Feb and March and presented at the Author's Fair in May:

Our Big Backyard

The theme of this book will be God's grand creation.  The world is our classroom!  And it is also our big backyard, so your child can write about anything at all in nature--with one caveat:  the child must be able to engage with that thing with his or her senses.  So, this means your child probably should not choose to write about the Sahara desert. . . but of course he could write about Death Valley if he's been there recently and can remember it well.  And exotic animals like Golden Lion Tamarins would not be the best topic. . . unless your family gets to observe them at a zoo.  The best topics will be those that your children can experience as fully as possible, with as many of their senses as possible--tide pools, or banana slugs, or erosion, or mushrooms, or Salinas valley farms, or babies, or weather. . . you have so much room here to be creative with your topic, and choose a subject that fits your child's interests and experiences and your family's recent homeschool studies.  

You can choose something you want to learn about with your kids for this project, or you can piggy-back this project with something you are already studying.  Make the project fit with whatever works for your family and your homeschool schedule.  

This year we will not do the art all together, so you and your child can decide what medium best suits his/her topic. 

I'll write more on the specifics of the project later--this was just the heads up to get you all thinking about possible topics for your child's page.  

But in the meantime, here are the important deadlines for the project, so you can figure those into your planning:

April 22, noon - 2:30: All pages complete, bring to Old School Monday gathering for binding party

May 4 : Author's Fair at Capitola Mall