Basic Emotions Read Aloud Book and Workbook

June 26, 2010

Just finished my book: Miss Spider and Mr. Spider Basic Emotions Book check the information on it here.

New book for preschool math and work read alouds

June 12, 2010

In preparation for the preschool opening, I’ve been buried in study. I’ve been trying to complete my latest book (it’s so close to being finished). My new book was inspired by John Taylor Gatto in that he talks about how children are capable of doing things and giving back to the community. My new story is about a young girl that helps a homeless pup and learns about volunteering along with other things. It’s a great story for a read aloud that involves many topic subjects: math, emotions, art, the value of work, and occupations.

For some links to John Taylor Gatto's talks click here.

Preschool Free Activites

June 13, 2010

I’ve started to put up my things that I make for my students and hope you can find some use for them, too. I just recently updated the “games” section with a couple of books (one about grandmothers and the other about an aquarium) You can download them freely and share them with your students. Work with the children to illustrate them.

To find them and download them click here. They will download directly to Microsoft Word.

Persian Steampunk

April 9, 2010

I’m so in love with Steampunk these days. I love it’s mystical, futuristic, debonair, tough vibe. I had no idea that’s the name for what I like. But after wasting lots of time on Etsy for some hard looks with elegance–behold Steampunk. My more recent work is sort of Emo and Steampunk and trying to incorporate more colors into my work. Some stuff I picked up online today taught me about showing art–my dream as I’ve only done it once at a small gallery–and then I scrolled down and found an interview with a very successful steampunk–fantasy artist you can find the link here. Her style is a little tiny bit similar to mine.

--**Update: June 26, 2010: Here is a quick drawing I did which captures the steampunk attitude with a Persian feel--especially Persian style around the 70s when wearing mini skirts was widely practiced. The shoes were modeled after a pair of zebra printed Sam Edelman's I have and adore. I used water color in the color of henna, added some steampunk goggles, and made the hair to resemble hejab, nose strong and eyes wide like a strong Persian lady.

I’ll post some of my work here pretty soon. I’ve been doing a lot of research on different funky styles, lately.

I’ve also been thinking to merge middle eastern styles with a steampunkish vibe. We’ll see. I think that would make a sweet global vibe.

Stuff I like and may be you will like, too! (Where ever possible I have inserted the link into the picture–so if you click on the link it will lead you to the place where I found it) Some of these are from friends and some are from the vast Internet)

My First Art Show 2009!

My art work was on display at a temporary gallery show in Daegu, South Korea.

It was quite an exciting event for me!

The artwork is from The Mathmagician and the Bizarre Expedition. The book is still in progress. The originals are created using artist's marker paper, Copic and Prismacolor art markers.

One was a print, the original is an oil painting on illustrator board, from Elie Nelie Elephant: Search For True Colors. However, that painting has been edited out of the book.

Creativity; some thoughts on it and why we need it to survive.

Creativity: “For along time, creativity at school was just about music, poetry and painting but the true nature of creativity is much, much wider than that.

It is about ideas, imagination, dealing with change, dealing with challenge, developing confidence in oneself and, in so many ways, breaking the rules.

As Picasso said, 'Every act of creation is first an act of destruction'.

Think of it from an evolutionary point of view. For anything to survive it needs to evolve. To change. It's the same with thoughts. If we just teach young people to think our thoughts then thinking doesn't change.

And when something fails to change, it fails to survive.”

from: www.independentthinking.org.uk

Now, I had a professor, the very vivacious Diane Dowdell (like “Cowbell”), that would constantly reiterate: Creativity is not something that is intrinsically inherent. It is something that is acquired through a learning process and if practiced can become stronger and better just as any skill—like Math, English, Science, Business are learned.

As mentors, teachers, or parents to children we have the opportunity and an obligation to teach children “how to think” not “what to think”. We teach them how to think creatively—to solve problems on their own, to search for their own answers, to ask their own questions.

Creativity, as defined by Wikipedia: “a mental and social process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the creative mind between existing ideas or concepts.”

Creativity can easily be fostered in art, music, dance, and things we general think of as creative; but also in other subjects. There are always problems to be solved, new associations to be made, and new ways of looking at things.

As far as this is concerned with my books, practice, teaching, and every day life: I believe kids respond well to creativity and open-endedness. Specifically, in teaching I mean creatively presenting the kids the material and open-endedness meaning not giving the children the answer but letting them attempt to find their own or collectively. I believe this teaches problem solving skills and creativity in the classroom. I think the idea is pretty well accepted by teachers, but I still see a lot of rote memorization and just plain old boring presentations by teachers in schools today.

I believe kids don’t learn well if it’s boring. This means we must present material in creative ways. In relation to my practice and my books, I believe kids will learn to read and enjoy reading (learning new things) if they are given something interesting to read. In addition, giving a child something to read or study that is creatively done teaches children that it’s okay to think creatively or how to think creatively.

Mr. and Miss Spider

Mr. and Miss Spider
Copyright 2008 The Caterpillar Press (37 Pages)
Author and Artist Meredith Lee Priesmeyer
www.lulu.com/mpriesmeyer

About the book : Discuss emotions/feelings through word association.
Ideal for beginners in English whether that be 0 to 12.
Ideal for children who learn best using pictures.

Use word association and cute rhymes to discuss emotions and boost a child's emotional intelligence.

Ask along with Mr. and Miss Spider, saying, "What makes you feel happy?"

The facial illustration of the spiders in this book were developed using images from the clinical emotional counseling tool EMOGRAM.

Created Using: Marker Paper, Prismacolor Markers, and Pencils. Final illustrations are scanned into the computer and edited with computer software.