Celebrate Color: Happy Birthday Kandinsky!
Celebrate the many colors of Wassily Kandinsky and practice the math of concentricity in the process. Kandinsky connected color to sound. What an awesome metaphor: "The sound of colors is so definite that it would be hard to find…
Read a Book / Make a Map
When is a family like a map? Take a virtual trip to Paris to explore the metaphor! This is the story of an old Parisian named Armand, who relished his solitary life. Children, he said, were like starlings, and…
Great Ideas: Be Inspired by Books
Every journey through a Blackbird & Company literature discovery guide ends with a final project for the student to create and present. It’s usually everyone’s favorite activity and it gives them an opportunity to extend their time with a story…
Kalidescope of Butterflies
Claude Monet's birthday was a November celebration. Imagine the Impressionist in his garden, over 100 years ago, painting something wonderful. After reading A Blue Butterfly by Bijou Le Tord, I set my students free to watercolor butterflies in all shades of…
After a Book Journey: Create
Reading a book is a journey. From Los Angeles to New York you’ll travel through the city and the countryside meeting wonderful people and seeing new and exciting places. Let the journey begin! (Hat tip to Reading Rainbow.) Take your 2nd grader…
Take a Line for a Walk
Here we are again, First-Days-of-School upon us. All of us teachers are certainly prepared with a hefty handful of academic goals, each comprised of an even heftier handful of learning objectivStill I can't help but smile, as Fall sneaks in…
Ugly Vegetables
Use Blackbird & Company’s Earlybird Spring Literature and Writing Discovery Guide to plant a Chinese vegetable garden! The Ugly Vegetables by Grace Lin tells the tale of a little girl who helps her mother grow some very unusual vegetables while…
April Showers
For this project, begin with a sheet of watercolor paper or heavy cardstock. Next practice drawing some iconic clouds on scratch paper. When you are happy with your design, draw three or four or five clouds in pencil lightly on…
Rechenka’s Eggs
The fifth book in our Earlybird thematic Spring Discovery Guide is a Blackbird & Company favorite, Rechenka’s Eggs by Patricia Polacco is in our top ten favorite children’s books of all times! Beautifully illustrated this wonderfully told tale will introduce your student to…
Earlybird for the Month of Poetry
April is just around the corner. It’s time to think poetry. When is a flounder like a dish? Who reads the Newt News? How many lumps on the Bactrian’s back? How many words rhyme with weevil? What does the…