This month’s Creative Writing for Beginning Readers class took inspiration from the book Violet and Victor Write the Best-Ever Bookworm Book by Alice Kuipers and illustrated by Bethany Murguia. It’s a very cute book about a boy and a girl who make up a story about a bookworm who slips […]
Kids’ Writing Workshop with Kirk Scroggs!
Published on :Last Friday our Kids’ Writing Workshop welcomed author Kirk Scroggs, who wrote the Wiley & Grampa’s Creature Features series, the Snoop Troop series and the Tales of a Sixth-Grade Muppet series. He gave us a presentation about his books and characters, and then we did activities where we took a […]
Mother Daughter Book Club: A Snicker of Magic
Published on :Tonight’s Mother Daughter Book Club discussed the book A Snicker of Magic by Natalie Lloyd, a magical realism book about a contemporary girl who has an extraordinary ability to see words everywhere that other people don’t see. It’s also about a charming Tennessee town which fell under a curse and […]
Creative Writing for Beginning Readers: Imaginary Friends
Published on :On July 1st, we had a program for early elementary school kids from ages 5-8 years old to encourage them to do creative writing. Miss AnnMarie prepared the materials and Mr. Nick did a wonderful job presenting it. Mr. Nick read two books: The Adventures of Beekle, The Unimaginary Friend […]
Kids’ Writing Workshop: Writing Engaging Beginnings
Published on :This month our workshop focused on that cardinal rule of writing: hook ’em with your first sentence! The activities we did got the kids writing actual first sentences and getting feedback from their peers. Here’s the handout I gave the kids. I’m a big believer in drawing inspiration from current, […]
Summer Reading Kickoff: Read to the Rhythm!
Published on :We had forty participants at our Kickoff program to our Summer Reading Challenge! Families came to our Studio On 4th to dance, make musical instruments and rock out! Here’s a video of some of the highlights of the program: We had a Wii set up for dancing: We made […]
The Science of Making Music
Published on :This afternoon we had a program at Pasadena Library about how to make a musical instrument–something that would produce not just noise, but definite pitches that you could change or manipulate. We learned about aerophones, chordophones, idiophones and membranophones, and then got a chance to make our own DIY instruments. […]
Tablets and Tech for Kids: an iPad toys open house!
Published on :We had a fun tech program for kids yesterday, a kind of open house for the iPad apps and toys we have acquired! We played with Wonder Workshop robots and Osmo game systems, toys that extend the two-dimensional screen of the iPad to three-dimensional play. Kids and parents had a lot […]
Kids’ Writing Workshop: Revising!
Published on :On Friday, May 8, we focused on revising using a multi-layered approach I playfully call “Miss AnnMarie’s Thirteen Steps to a Perfect Final Draft.” Is any final draft ever perfect? I don’t know… but if you follow these steps you WILL get about as close to perfect as is possible for […]
Free Comic Book Day May 2nd, 2015
Published on :We kicked off Free Comic Book Day 2015 at 1 pm on Saturday with a visit from three comic book artists, who shared with us their art, their passion and their insights. We held the event on the 4th Floor Studio. After getting lots of inspiration from […]