Comic By Janani

Today I wanted to share a comic my little one created. In our childhood, my brother had a huge collection of ‘Rani comics’ and we would be fighting for it. Now, my little one has only two comic books in our story book collection but, wanted to make one on her own. 

She loves drawing and she wanted to make the comic based on a story that I narrated.  It was ‘Long Bony Finger’ by Gargi pant and you can read the story here.

This is what she made. I loved the way she created the characters and planned the frames. 

I read Mickael Corley's post on making comic strips and I loved it. So, I wanted to convert my little one’s work into comic strips. First, I began to ink her drawings and dialogues. When I started doing this, my little one’s enthusiasm grown and she included and redrew few more scenes. I created the border template in the strips, cut the frames from her comic and paste it in the template.  

My husband made this soft bound and labeled it. Her first comic is all ready!

Fall in Love with Tie and Dye

It is all started in one fine evening - we tie-dyed some white fabrics and we had lot of great time together. It’s fun, easy, and the final outcome is fantabulous.   We started with acrylic paints and continued with artificial colors and natural colors.

Whatever is the dye - whether it is acrylic paints, natural colors or artificial colors, the first step is to prepare the fabric.  I cut an unused Dhoti into small squares and folded them.  Actually, creating different patterns depends on how the fabric is being folded. For different folding techniques check here.We can make stripes, bold concentric circles, spirals or something new. Yes, you don’t need to worry about the final pattern. However you fold, you’ll create something new, unique, and colorful patterns.  Excitement guaranteed.  

To Tie and dye with Acrylic paint:

1.      Fold the fabric according to your preference and tie it up using rubber bands or knots as shown. Wet the cloth and dilute the acrylic paints. The paint can be applied using a brush as we did or you can fill diluted paint in a squeeze bottle and apply it.  Let them set at least for half an hour and then remove the knots/rubber bands. Now you can wash the fabric and dry it.

                                                                           For Spiral Shapes

2.      This is acrylic paints sun prints.  Wet the fabric, paint it and place leaves, flowers or foam shapes, keys or stencils as shown and dry it completely in sun light. Kids will be surprised when they pull of the shapes.

To tie dye with natural colors:

I wanted to try some natural colors and I used turmeric power - definitely a foolproof one. Put a table spoon of turmeric powder and a tsp of salt in boiling water. Put the folded and tied fabric and switch off the flame.  Let it sit for couple of minutes and then wash the cloth and dry it.

I also boiled some onion skin and pink radish skin.  I used unfolded white cloths as  I just wanted to see the color it brings.  These are the results.

To tie dye with artificial colors:

Just like turmeric powder add a tbsp of dye powder and salt in the boiling water and then pour it on the tied fabric.  Let it sit for couple of minutes and then wash the cloth and dry it.

Acrylic tie dye is best for kids under 7 as the other 2 methods need boiling water. Tie dye is the craft that will never get old. Creating the unique patterns and colorful deigns is easy and I am sure your kids will enjoy a lot.

Spelling Tips

Teaching spelling is really a challenging task. If children simply memorize the word by copying the word repeatedly (Rote memorization), they will forget it easily. Giving dictation on random words makes them frustrated. I learnt some meaningful spelling activities from themeasuredmom and that helped me a lot. Here is a list of few things what I follow.

1. Teach them the phonemes to identify the different sounds involved in a word.

2. Teach them the spelling rules such as,  

1.    Silent ‘e’ alters the vowel sound.

Example: mad – made, fin-fine, tap-tape, hop-hope, man-mane.

2.     ‘ck’ follows single vowel to make ‘k’ sound whereas, simple ‘k’ follows double vowel or consonants.
       Example: Duck, Lock,Neck,Pack,Sick, Book,Beak,Seek,Week/Weak,Ask

3.    We often put double ‘f’, ‘I’,  ‘s’  after single vowel at the end of the base words. 

Examples: Ball, Tell, Tall, Wall, Moss, Cliff, dull, mall, pull.

4.    Never ending letters:   ‘u’ and ‘v’ never comes at the end. We always add a silent ‘e’.  ‘I’ and ‘j’ also never comes at the end.  Replace ‘i’ by ‘y’ and ‘j’ by ‘ge’.

Examples: Value, Blue, Glue, Argue, True, Valve, Love, Give, Solve.

                    Happy, rally, Silly, Bridge, Fridge, Judge,

3. Sort the words according to the spelling patterns and teach them. Word sorting helps them compare, analyze and recognize the spelling.

For example, I started with a simple word ‘and’ then I continued dictating words like band, sand, stand, wand , brand, gland, random, standard,  and understand.

Similarly you can sort words like, cake, fake, make, shake, wake, Lake in a group and Apple, people, purple, couple, maple in another group.

We can even involve our children in these sorting activities by giving them a set of words and ask them to group it. We can play cut and paste, cross it out and Bingo.

My little one loves to write with a water filled glue bottle.

Instead of sitting down with paper and pen, she will run here and there in the terrace and write the words. It is fun to watch these water words which evaporate quickly.