Showing posts with label enrichment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label enrichment. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Tar Heel Readers for Hands on Art 2008-9 projects

Tar Heel Reader is an innovative literacy website that provides age-appropriate and interesting online picture books for new readers of all ages. (Because a new reader who is 16, or 36 or 56, doesn't generally want to read only about puppies and kitties and teddybears, eh?) In the past year, I've made Tar Heel Readers to go with several of our Hands on Art projects. Check them out! These books can be used online by one student, or downloaded as powerpoint presentations for a whole class, in case those modes are useful to any of our docents.


Watch for more Tar Heel Readers that match our 2009-10 lesson plans--they'll be linked here as supplements as we go through the year.

Enrichment material for "Fixing a Shadow" lesson: Anna Atkins (1799-1871)

Our Fixing a Shadow lesson focuses on the work of Fox Talbot. But.... did you know that the very first book of photography was made of sunprints, just like we're making?

Anna Atkins (1799-1871, pictured at left) was the same generation as Fox Talbot; her father was a scientist and a librarian at the British Museum. When her father published a translation of a French book about shells in 1823, Anna provided over 250 illustrations. In 1839, Anna was recognized for her work when she was elected to the Botanical Society of London. It was around this time that she started making cyanotypes (sunprints) of different species of algae, based on Fox Talbot's method. In 1843, she began publishing British Algae, and followed that with another compilation of cyanotypes, The Ferns (1854). Because each print was unique, these books were published in very small runs, and only a few copies remain today.

Check out selections from the New York Public Library's set of Anna Atkins's stunning algae cyanotypes here.