Camp Creek Press

I've formed an Arts & Crafts group over at NaBloPoMo. For the uninitiated, NaBloPoMo is the bloggy equivalent of NaNoWriMo -- the aim is to post at least once a day during the month of November. Whew! Sounds like a lot of work. Do I have that much to post about? On the other hand, I love it when my favorite blogs post a lot, so ... I'm going to at least give it a try. If you blog, consider coming over and joining us!

For the seven years that I ran my private school, we had an art- and project-based curriculum. Soon after we opened, I discovered the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education, and learning about their methods inspired and informed the remainder of our days in the classroom.

One of the tenets of the Reggio approach is that children deserve high-quality art materials.

Why buy expensive high-quality materials for children? They just burn through whatever you give them. Can we afford to buy them expensive paper, when they can produce 25 drawings in one sitting? And that sitting only lasted 20 minutes?

Giving children high-quality materials sends a message. It's not enough to say, "I think your work is important." If I give my children cheap paper and paint, what can they produce? Muddy-colored paintings that dry and flake off cheap, thin paper that tears easily. My mouth is saying "Your work is important" but the materials are saying "Your work is not important."

It's true that you can't just hand children a pile of expensive paper and a basket of high-quality markers and walk away without a backward glance. You need to convey your respect for the materials, and teach the children how to use them properly and put them away so they'll be good for next time.

The youngest children in our classroom -- just-turned three's -- were capable of washing out their paintbrushes and palettes and putting them away. Age is no excuse for not taking care of your materials.

It's also valuable to teach children that some kinds of drawings belong on "regular" paper (although the lowest-quality paper I can accept is copy paper -- not too expensive at 500 sheets for a few dollars). We use copy paper to make marker drawings, pencil drawings, mini-books, etc. We go through a great deal of it! But we also have watercolor paper, heavy paper for painting with tempera and acrylics, charcoal, and ink.

There are many steps to introducing high-quality materials and tools to young children and teaching them how to use and care for them. For now, I'll just say the following:

• High-quality materials convey to children that their work is important.

• High-quality materials inspire children to work more slowly and carefully.

• Children's important work deserves high-quality materials.

I could say much more! And I will .. in time. ;^)

The wider the range of possibilities we offer children, the more intense will be their motivations and the richer their experiences. (Loris Malaguzzi)

 
When we travel, the boys each get

• a fresh, new, smallish journal (one we expect they will nearly fill by the end of the trip)
• a pencil holder, preferably large with a zipper
• two regular pencils, a pencil sharpener (that keeps the shavings inside!), and soft white eraser
• a set of colored pencils
  
• pens (Pilot or Sharpie, in different colors)
• safety scissors
  
• glue stick
  

We have experimented with bringing rolls of tape, but it gets all linty and the boys end up using it to tape their entire heads or their arms or the car windows. Or all three. We've also experimented with bringing mini-staplers, but they jam so often that I spend all my time digging at them and we end up with little colored staples stuck in the floor.

The white erasers are far superior to pink or yellow rubber erasers at erasing thoroughly without making a mess. The boys are also fond of the traditional pencil-top erasers; if those are soft and new, they work well.

The trip journal serves many purposes.

It's the best, cheapest souvenir of any vacation. You can't look at that plastic back-scratcher and remember when your brother accidentally pulled the curtain rod off the wall at the Holiday Inn while your mother was changing into her bathing suit, but your childish HA HA scratching out of the story (complete with line drawing of mom's face) will forever dredge up that pearl of a memory, whole and complete.

It's something to do, either in the car or in the tent/camper/hotel room. When you're booorrrrrred, Mom can suggest you work on your journal. Every place we go, the boys are alert for free brochures and newspapers that they can cut up and glue into their journals later. This keeps their reflexes sharp. Sometimes they are barely in the front door before they are fighting each other to snatch up the free brochure on the counter, causing the sleepy person behind the desk to startle and shrink back in .. admiration for their enthusiasm, I'm sure.

They write and draw in their journals, paste in postcards and stickers, copy maps, play games, etc. For this latest trip, I sprang for Moleskine journals for each boy. The Moleskines are great for trip journals because they have a pocket in the back to hold random ticket stubs, postcards, etc. You can also just glue an envelope onto the last page of any old journal to provide a catch-all.

There are always blank pages at the end of their journals when the trip is over. I print out their favorite photos from the trip and they glue those in the back, usually adding their own captions.

The journals end up being a very truthful representation of their trip -- with a focus on what was important to them (meals) and not what was important to me (once-in-a-lifetime shared experiences). At one point during this trip I walked out of the laundromat at Yellowstone National Park wearing our hamper on my head, to the great amusement of the boys, who ran ahead of me to take pictures of this momentous event. An amused woman passing by said, "Ah, special vacation memories!" That's right. The things the boys will remember most about this trip were the pancakes we had at the Old Mill Inn and when I wore the hamper on my head. And both of those memories are in their journals.

 

We have returned. Sound the trumpets.

There is nothing like a two-week road trip with two boys age 7 and 10 for getting in touch with your inner child. The line between childlike wonder and childish tantrum is admittedly thin, but there are so many things you wouldn't do without a medium-sized boy yanking your arm in that direction (mammoth museum!) and so many things you wouldn't spend nearly as much time doing without a medium-sized boy's infectious enthusiasm (eating ice cream). (Pictured: Seven-year-old boy drawing comics in our 1973 Airstream -- dig that groovy orange!)

Our biggest travel aid on a previous long road trip to Quebec was a car DVD player (two screens!). I cannot be shamed about this; when you are forcing small children to endure many hours in the 2/3-size third-row seat of an SUV stuffed with adults, you must at least offer them Looney Tunes. Our car DVD player even has A/V in/out so the boys could use their plug-and-play Ms. Pacman game -- and one screen could run the cartoons while the other ran Pacman! This bought us hours and hours of blissful silence from the way-back seat.

So, imagine my chagrin when, 60 miles into this 3750-mile trip, I realized I had somehow neglected to pack the power cord for the DVD player.

And what entertained the two medium-sized boys for their very long car ride to and from Wyoming? They had a tote bag filled with Calvin and Hobbes books and personal canvas bags packed with, among other things, blank journals, pens, markers, colored pencils, and glue sticks. We also make a travel journal when we take a significant trip, but they also had an additional blank book which serendipitously became a place to draw Calvin and Hobbes (an artistic homage) and make up their own comic strips. This entertained them for hours -- nay, entire days -- of driving.

I want to share their trip journals (I make one, too), but first, here's a peek inside the boys' travel bags, good for two weeks traveling through the windy, sun-scorched west:

ten-year-old's:

seven-year-old's:

We are out of town on a little road trip to the western part of the U.S. We'll be back soon!

"We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading." -- B.F. Skinner

Lulu's library (Wondertime)

gardenhoe/sara's son's reading corner

aoneko's reading chair

two straight lines' reading corner

little birds' reading nook

Largo Library children's reading porches