Fall Counting

Yesterday, we went on an exploration of some large public gardens in Vancouver called Van Dusen Gardens. I've been having a new parenting challenge, which  is that I have completely lost my voice. I feel just fine, but cannot speak. I never realized how much I rely on my voice to keep Auggie entertained. Being outside in the sun helped, but when we started to flag, I gave him the task of finding numbers, like, what can we find for "1" and for "2" and so on. It was a sort of numbers scavenger hunt and it was fun.

We took pictures and then the next morning did drawings. I put together a quick PDF and published our project to issue. Issuu is free, and if you can make a PDF (which you can also do in photoshop), you can make a little library of your own. You can read ours here or make your own.

This was Auggie's description of the our day and our project: "Well, it was really beautiful."

Mr. Salteena's Plan (The Young Visiters)

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Happy Valentine's Day!

The Teachers' Holidays

The Teachers' Holidays(PDF link) was written and photo-illustrated by the children in Division 1 and 2 at Charles Dickens Elementary after reading Foggy.

It begins: One June morning, all the kids in Karen, Jen, and Wendy's classes were looking forward to summer. The kids began to imagine what the teachers might do on their holidays....

Rainy by Euan

When we did our book tour for Sunny, we found that one of the exciting things about the books is that they inspire children to make their own illustrated books or animations. This is partly because they are photographic, so they are perhaps less daunting than drawing or painting at a professional level. Also, our dioramas often incorporate everyday objects (such as pencils for telephone poles) and this sparks all kinds of ideas....

One of the things we'd like to do with this blog is showcase some of the amazing and cool responses that we come across from young readers.

Here is the director's cut of the short film Rainy, inspired by the test photos for Foggy, by Euan.

Windy School Project - Thank you teachers

At the end of the school year last June, the Kindergarten, grade 1 and 2 class at Charles Dickens Elementary wrote and illustrated this great story book, inspired by the Windy books. The portrait above is of Ray and Cookie, the stars of the story. The kids made all the characters (dolls of kids in the class and the teachers) and made all the presents (from found objects) to give to the teachers at the end of the year.