Summer in the City Virtual Blog Tour: Let the Rhythm Move You!

Summer in the City Virtual Blog Tour:
Let the Rhythm Move You!

I am so honored to be part of Kathleen Wainwright's Summer in the City Virtual Blog Tour! Kathleen is a fellow teacher-author and you may know her from her fabulous blog "The Diary of a Not So Wimpy Teacher." Her first book, Summer in the City, comes out March 8th and can be pre-ordered now at http://kathleenwainwright.com/ You can also enter the giveaway, below, for a chance to win your own copy of the book! Each book purchase from her website comes with a pair of jacks and a jumprope. The ebook can be purchased on TeachersPayTeachers and comes with free teaching resources.

When I first read Summer in the City I was drawn to the rhythm. The rhyming nature of the lines read just like a poem, and I found myself almost singing it page by page.

Lines like "Taking turns trading skates for the bike, playing from sun-up to sun-down...what every kid likes" combine rhymes with alliteration for a fantastic-sounding sentence brimming with life.

The gorgeous illustrations (by Nancy Devard) add to the beauty of the text and are full of life, as well. Each character is doing something on every page, giving all readers so much to absorb.

And while I absolutely love the poetic nature of the book, I have to admit that my favorite part is that I can relate to it completely. It brings back such fond memories of my own childhood playing with my older siblings. Even though I grew up in an extremely small town in Iowa during the 70s and 80s, I see myself with my sister and friends on our front porch playing jacks and playing "hide-and-seek games" (like kick the can) at the park. And don't even get me started on wearing jellies! I can't stop smiling every time I read Kathleen's book, and I know you won't be able to, either.

Ultimately, I think the best books are those that offer both obvious and subtle details so you are instantly drawn to the pages, but continue to re-read to see what you missed the first time around. Summer in the City is certainly a book that I will read and re-read tirelessly year after year.

To learn more about the book and see a sneak peek, watch the book trailer, embedded below. Also, there are plenty of teaching resources available.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-s-aNO0TpQc

I want to thank Kathleen for letting me be part of her Summer in the City Virtual Blog Tour. Make sure to enter the contest and check out all the other great posts on the tour!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

About the author:


Kathleen Wainwright is a dedicated teacher in the School District of Philadelphia. She received her bachelor’s of Science degree in education from Temple University in Philadelphia, PA, and her master’s in education with a focus in literacy, from West Chester University, in West Chester, PA. Kathleen also teaches literacy courses to aspiring teachers at Temple University and developmental reading courses to incoming freshman at Delaware County Community College. “This story captures a typical summer’s day for me and my friends growing up in the 80’s! Every time I read it I travel back to some of my favorite childhood memories.” Kathleen recently earned National Board Certification in Literacy: Reading-Language Arts (Early and Middle Childhood). She enjoys sharing her personal teaching experiences and educational resources in her blog, The Diary of a Not So Wimpy Teacher (www.notsowimpyresources.com).

Each book purchase comes with a pair of jacks and a jumprope.

Purchase the eBook (with teaching resources) here: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/eBookSummer-in-the-City-Written-by-Kathleen-Wainwright

Cute School Supplies Clip Art for Commercial Use

 I started creating these little "props" to use in my own lessons almost a year ago. As you probably know, I am pretty slow to post new products because it does take me a while to complete them. So it was such a relief to finally finish this package of school-related graphics yesterday. It includes over 95 PNG files that can be used commercially and/or for educational and personal use. My only requirement is a link back to my website or my teacher store.

One of the great things about these school supplies is that they can be layered with your favorite characters, as demonstrated below...

...or used on their own.

SIDE NOTE: I have had many questions about "layering" and the difference between JPG (or jpeg) files and PNG files. If you scroll down to the bottom, I included a very brief explanation. :)

My school supplies bundle contains many images in full color as well as line-art, so you can have students color the graphics (plus it saves on ink). Below, I combined the iPad-like tablet with my Handwriting Lines clip art, which comes in a variety of lengths and widths and is so easy to work with when creating products for primary students.

I decided to create my people figures separate from the supplies because I think it adds versatility for the user of the graphics. Have you ever wanted to use an image of a group of items, but one item just didn't fit with what you were making? Now you can make your own groupings, like I did with these sports balls and equipment. (Plus, some teachers may not want the cute little people. But the "props" are still "cool" enough to use with older students.)

Another advantage is with the overall design of your product or scrapbook page. Sometimes you have to tweak items to make them work. Above, I was able to position the golf club and golf ball to suit my needs. Below, the book and ruler in the image were both rotated to fit in the girl's hands perfectly. 

PNG vs. JPG files...

In case I have completely confused you with all this talk about "layering" images, it helps to know a little about the types of images if you plan to design things digitally.  So here's a very condensed explanation to the difference between PNG files and JPG files:

The PNG format makes it possible to knock-out the background, so your images easily layer on top of one another without the white (or whatever color) background overlapping. You cannot layer JPG (or jpeg) files like this. 

To demonstrate, see the image below. The girl on the left is a JPG file and the girl on the right in a PNG file. When each is placed on a purplish background, the JPG file will maintain its white background. The PNG's is knocked-out, allowing you to place additional PNG files on top of it. 

Another difference between the two is PNG files never lose their quality.  JPGs, however, will begin to degrade every time you open them, so over time the quality of the image will not be as sharp. Because of this, PNG files are much larger than JPGs, making JPGs (and GIFs) more ideal for web browsing because they load faster. This was something I learned while teaching journalism and advising yearbook and newspaper (because digital photography was not around when I was in college...yes, I'm that old). I picked up a lot during those years, and continue to learn as technology keeps advancing. That's an advantage to teaching: it forces us to keep learning and passing along that knowledge. Of course, I learn just as much from my students as they learn from me.

If you need help working with images in Microsoft Word (which, in my opinion, is one of the worst programs for design/working with images), you can download this free tutorial. People who use Microsoft and do a lot of designing would probably be better off using Powerpoint or Publisher. 

Since I am a Mac girl, I use the iWork applications (Pages, Keynote) and Adobe's Creative Suites apps: Photoshop and InDesign. Pages is much like InDesign, but much easier, so I have actually converted to using Pages more. If you use a Mac, I highly recommend it!

Back to the clip art...

All of my images are PNG files. On occasion I will include additional JPG files, but I will always include the PNG files. You can find all of my packages in the clip art department of my teacher store. 

Or just click on my button below.

Or if you are looking for specific packages, here are some links to my recent ones:

 I appreciate you stopping by my blog! This post was long overdue, so I apologize for its length. As thanks for reading through it, you can click {HERE} to get some limited-time freebies from some of my new packages. Hurry, though. They will only be available for a limited time. Please read the terms of use if using these for commercial products. Also, they cannot be resold in a clip art package, or altered and resold as clip art. If used in a free product, it must be secured in a PDF document. No exceptions. Thank you!