Inspiration

I love when things are clever and funny at the same time, when it is ‘art’ too, well it’s a triple whammy! The down to earth Scottish sculptor and artist George Wyllie is sadly missed for these attributes.  Who else would create a machine to applaud a painting, and what Glaswegian in the 1980’s can’t remember the straw locomotive hanging from the Finnieston Crane or the even more iconic paper boat? Well, this coming Saturday sees school children celebrating the paper boat and launching their own into the Clyde at Greenock (Beacon Arts Centre). So today I’ve joined in the boat madness and learned how to make a paper boat. JoJo Gnome is onboard complete with life belts (just in case of any sinking incident). I will let you know how it goes!

Listen Up, A Sound Hunt.

In JoJo Gnome and the Sound Machine, my little gnome discovers the joy of listening and collecting sounds. In this very visual world its good to get our kids back to appreciating their surroundings using all their senses … so here’s a good work out for little ears.

A sound hunt, which will keep under 5’s amused inside or outside the house …a listening walk. There are lots of ways to do this but here are a few suggestions

(a) Use the chart with the picture symbols and go looking for the sounds near by…it shouldn’t be too hard. There is a chart for outside and also for inside the house. Add in your own sound symbols too.

(b)  For older children be more specific in your instructions. Listen for 3 kinds of different birds. Listen for 2 different water noise (drips and water from the tap) etc.

(c)  Let the kids create their own sound hunt …here’s hoping you are up for the challenge!!!!

Enjoy having fun with sound and happy listening!

 Kids’ Authors

The start of this week saw the last event at the Edinburgh Book Festival, the School Gala Day. I saw a couple of great booky people. The award winning Janis Mackay shared the inspiration for her latest book, The Accidental Time Traveller (which was incidentally the diary of a young child who died in Victorian times when she was very young).  The other was illustrator Sarah McIntyre, who was talking about her latest book Super Kid. She showed us all how to draw her Super Hamster character (mine’s not very good..see above), great fun event! Loved the fantastic deck chairs they had there with great quotes.

Sound Sewing

The sound quilt is coming on…back finished now and construction about to happen.  Sent away for the sound bits (notice lack of technical detail here!!!) to make it interactive for the kids…well you can’t have a sound quilt without actual sound. That would be cheating! Doing an event with the quilt in September so better stop writing and start sewing again.