The eighth book in the bestselling Tom Gates series of books from the brilliantly talented Liz Pichon. Sometimes making up my mind isn't easy to do. Especially when my grumpy sister Delia is LOOMING over me. Mum's on a mission to TIDY UP the whole house. She says if I can't decide what to get rid of, she'll do it for me. Which would be a DISASTER! Lucky for me, The FOSSILS come to my rescue (more than once!) ABOUT THE SERIES: Written in diary form Full of Tom's doodles and pictures & his amazing sense of humour This first title in the series, was the winner of the Roald Dahl Funny Prize! Perfect gifts for boys & girls who love to laugh themselves silly The first series of The Brilliant World of Tom Gates won the Scottish BAFTA for Entertainment! Love Tom Gates? Don't miss Liz Pichon's spectacular Shoe Wars, a laugh-out-loud, gadget-packed adventure!

When you're looking to perfect your handwriting, there's no better way to improve than with daily practice. This superb workbook for the Year 3 Autumn Term is full of colourful activities and fun illustrations - with a whole page of handwriting practice for every school day of the term. It's perfect for independent practice at home or in class! Our Year 3 Daily Handwriting range is ideal for practising writing words, sentences, paragraphs and poems - all with interesting contexts perfect for pupils aged 7-8! Each page has large, clear type, ideal for pupils to copy and practice their letters and joins. Guidelines help pupils improve their letter sizing and consistency. For complete coverage of Year 3, buy this with our books for the Spring (9781789086621) and Summer term (9781789086638).

Creative Activities for the Early Years contains over 160 art and craft activities for use by reception classes, nurseries, playgroups, and mother and toddler groups, as well as by parents and carers. These tried and tested activities will help children to; use their imagination; express themselves creatively; communicate their ideas; and develop gross and fine motor skills. The activities are grouped by popular early years themes, together with songs and rhymes, suggestions for stories and things to talk about. Whether your topic is the autumn, the Chinese New Year, the coastline or ourselves, you can be sure you and your children will find the variety of activities interesting and entertaining.

This engagingly written, research- and practice-based book defines how art teachers can build on students' creative initiatives without depending on adult-imposed lesson plans and school requirements. In doing so, art educator and author George Szekely explores the role of the arts in developing children's creativity and sense of purpose, and reminds readers that students in the art classroom are unique artists, designers, and innovators. Against the backdrop of a school culture that over-emphasizes compliance and standardization, Szekely recognizes the importance of the role of the art teacher in supporting the artistic independence and creative flare that occurs naturally in students of all ages in the classroom. Providing real-life examples of classrooms and schools that work towards championing child artists, this text arms teachers with the skills necessary to listen to their students and support them in presenting their ideas in class. Ultimately, Szekely challenges readers to focus the practice of art teaching on the student's creative process, rather than the teacher's presentation of art. Written for pre-service and in-service art educators, teacher educators, and researchers, Teaching to Support Children's Creativity and Artistic Independence demonstrates that an openness to youthful and inquisitive visual expression inspires a more rewarding learning experience for both teacher and child artists that can support a life-long love of art.

A timeless and comforting picture book debut about the power of music to transform hearts and minds. From a tiny window, way up high, came a delicate tune. A melody, a song, a sound so sweet ... Day after day, the song drifts on to the breeze and through the town. It makes the old feel young and comforts the lonely. It fills the whole town with joy and kindness. No one knows who sings the song, but they know it is good. Until one day, the music stops. Can the town work together to save the song for everyone? In a gorgeous, lyrical story, debut picture-book creator Lucy Morris celebrates the joy of music, the importance of community, and the beauty of simple kindnesses. Sometimes it's the smallest things that draw us together. Perfect for fans of The World Made a Rainbow, this beautiful picture book is one to read again and again.

This brilliant CGP Handwriting Practice Book for Year 2 pupils (ages 6-7) introduces joined-up handwriting in a fun and accessible way. After a brief recap of all the letters of the alphabet, it moves onto joined-up handwriting. Each different type of join is covered, starting with an example that has arrows to follow to make the join. Pupils can then practise tracing and copying the join on its own, then within a range of words, all with guidelines and starting dots. Break letters and capital letters are also covered. At the end of the book, pupils can practise their joined-up handwriting by copying out longer pieces of writing. Hints are provided at the start of the book.

Building an Award-Winning Guitar Program is a practical guide to assist secondary and post-secondary music educators with the tasks involved in establishing a successful music program. With the rising interest in guitar, Mariachi, rock band, handbells, bluegrass, music technology, and so on, more and more music educators are being asked to teach innovative music classes. Author Bill Swick has crafted this book to help these educators build such innovative music programs from the ground floor, based on his years of experience as a music educator specialized in guitar. The book will assist music educators with classroom management, scheduling, structure, organization, fund raising, festivals, travel, and other subjects related to teaching guitar in the classroom, but its principles are broadly relevant to any and all music educators hoping to create a unique program that stands out within their school district and state, attracting students, parents, educators and administrators alike.

Free to Be Musical: Group Improvisation in Music is for those who lead musical experiences in the lives of children, youth, and adults. Offering a set of experiences to inspire creative musical expression, this book will prove useful for music education majors, practicing music teachers, community musicians, and music therapists alike. The experiences (or "events") are designed to reduce the musical barriers that Western societies pass on to children by the time they reach the "age of reason," when the natural childhood penchant to sing, dance, and play musically gives way to perfect performances of standard repertoire preserved in Western staff notation. The authors present ways to encourage music that is expressive and inventive, spontaneous yet thoughtful, communal and collaborative, and unlimited in its potential to bring fulfillment to those who make it. You'll find opportunities to release the musical imagination in ways that are free and expansive, playful and instructive, personal and interpersonal. Higgins and Campbell have created a context that validates the experiments and explorations of all people who are potential makers of all styles of music. Their musical events embrace the belief that music-making is "a trail of no mistakes," a celebration of the many and varied musical pathways that both teacher and student can take.

Social-Emotional Learning Using Makerspaces and Passion Projects is chock-full of meaningful projects that educators can use to teach social-emotional skills in grades 3-6. The projects show students how to create a digital calming room, prototype an inclusive playground, and make recycled cards with paper circuits to spread kindness. They also teach young makers how to focus on self-regulation and self-care, engage in community outreach by helping struggling families, and tell their own stories using podcasting and green screening. In addition, the book provides teachers with helpful strategies for scaffolding passion projects, funding a makerspace, and tips for building community and celebrating diversity. With the engaging ideas in this book, educators will be able to help their students build direct connections to social awareness, relationship skills, responsible decision-making, self-management, and self-awareness (CASEL's SEL Framework).

Every year, students clamber aboard the Hogwarts Express at platform nine and three-quarters and make their way to Hogwarts for the start of another school year. In the atmospheric castle and its vast grounds, they learn how to brew potions and cast spells, how to tend magical creatures and defend themselves from dark magic. This magical scrapbook takes young readers behind the scenes at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, covering everything from how students arrive at the school and are sorted into houses to the many magical subjects they study while there. From Transfiguration to Divination, and from Herbology to Charms and Quidditch, we are transported into the world of Harry and his friends with detailed profiles of each subject and information about the professors, classrooms and key lessons seen in the films. Gorgeously illustrated with dazzling concept art, behind-the-scenes photographs, and fascinating reflections from the actors and filmmakers, the scrapbook gives readers a spellbinding tour of Hogwarts life. Destined to be a must-have collectable for fans of Harry Potter, Hogwarts: A Movie Scrapbook also comes packed with interactive inserts.

Now in paperback! A curious kid's guide to graphic design, covering form, function, color, typography, and much more, plus 10 hands-on design projects. Written by Chip Kidd, "the closest thing to a rock star" in the design world (USA Today). Design is all around you. And whether you realize it or not, you are already a designer. In Go, renowned graphic designer Chip Kidd explains not just the elements of design, including form, line, color, scale, typography, and more, but most important, how to use those elements in creative ways. Like putting the word "go" on a stop sign, Go is all about shaking things up--and kids love its playful spirit and belief that the world looks better when you look at it differently. Kidd writes about scale: When a picture looks good small, don't stop there--see how it looks when it's really small. Or really big. He explains the difference between vertical lines and horizontal lines. The effect of cropping a picture to make it beautiful--or, cropping it even more to make it mysterious and compelling. How different colors signify different moods. The art of typography, including serifs and sans serifs, kerning and leading. The book ends with ten hands-on design projects for kids. "An excellent introduction to graphic design through [the author's] own excellent work. Anyone interested in the subject, including most practitioners, will find it delightful."--Milton Glaser

1) Focuses specifically on middle-schoolers 2) Offers a framework and structure for a Methods course, which places the student at the center rather than the musical genre or philosophy, precisely fitting with current thinking about teaching in music education 3) Features an integrated approach to research, not relying on any one philosophy and practical classroom applications 4) Includes practical applications in the form of lesson sequences, absent from the few books focused on middle-school education

Create a viable, meaningful program that will motivate your students and have them participating with enthusiasm with Middle School General Music: The Best Part of Your Day. A welcome guidebook for music teachers trying to navigate the sometimes turbulent waters of middle school general music, it offers strategies and lessons that have been created in the real world of general music by a practicing teacher. Revised and expanded to align with the National Core Arts Standards, each section of this second edition is full of tips and lessons to help middle schoolers develop a life-long love of music. From instructional units to composition projects, rhythm games to listening lessons, you'll find plenty of ideas for working with young adolescents. An appendix of suggested resources steers you to materials appropriate for middle-level students. Bolster your program with the discussion about why general music is so vital in middle school. If your music classes feel like the perfect storm, let McAnally make them the best part of your day.

This volume will contain selected proceedings from the 2013 Symposium on Music Teacher Education, sponsored by NAfME's Society for Music Teacher Education and hosted at University of North Carolina. After an introduction written by SMTE Chair, Doug Orzolek, the initial chapter will represent the keynote address of the symposium by Karen Hammerness, Director of Program Research for the Bard Master of Arts in Teaching Program. Hammerness will bring her comparative work with music teacher educators in Finland and Norway to bear in her address: From Inspiring Visions to Everyday Practices: Exploring Vision and Practice in Music Teacher Education. Hammerness's research distills into three main themes. To mitigate against the fragmentation that characterizes so much of contemporary education, teacher education programs must: 1) promote a clear vision of teachers and teaching; 2) be coherent, reflecting shared understanding of teaching and learning among faculty and students; 3) be built around a strong, core curriculum that is deeply tied to the practices of teaching. These three themes will orient the remainder of chapters in the volume, which will come from invited primary presenters at the 2013 Symposium. Due to selectivity of blind peer review (twenty-one percent accept rate), these presentations represent the most rigorous research, and best practices grounded in research, that the music education profession has to offer.

Discover new and exciting ways to teach STEM content through the arts in your early childhood program with this innovative and comprehensive guidebook. Chapters feature playful activities divided by age band that bridge early academic learning and social, emotional, physical, and mental development with active engagement in the arts. Structured activities include a materials list, safety concerns, key takeaways, and related readings, as well as explicit connections to research and national standards. With clear and concise lesson plans that walk you through activities in music, dance, media arts, visual arts, and theater, it becomes easy to bring development and learning through movement and creativity to your classroom or program.

This volume will contain selected proceedings from the 2013 Symposium on Music Teacher Education, sponsored by NAfME's Society for Music Teacher Education and hosted at University of North Carolina. After an introduction written by SMTE Chair, Doug Orzolek, the initial chapter will represent the keynote address of the symposium by Karen Hammerness, Director of Program Research for the Bard Master of Arts in Teaching Program. Hammerness will bring her comparative work with music teacher educators in Finland and Norway to bear in her address: From Inspiring Visions to Everyday Practices: Exploring Vision and Practice in Music Teacher Education. Hammerness's research distills into three main themes. To mitigate against the fragmentation that characterizes so much of contemporary education, teacher education programs must: 1) promote a clear vision of teachers and teaching; 2) be coherent, reflecting shared understanding of teaching and learning among faculty and students; 3) be built around a strong, core curriculum that is deeply tied to the practices of teaching. These three themes will orient the remainder of chapters in the volume, which will come from invited primary presenters at the 2013 Symposium. Due to selectivity of blind peer review (twenty-one percent accept rate), these presentations represent the most rigorous research, and best practices grounded in research, that the music education profession has to offer.

Discover new and exciting ways to teach STEM content through the arts in your early childhood program with this innovative and comprehensive guidebook. Chapters feature playful activities divided by age band that bridge early academic learning and social, emotional, physical, and mental development with active engagement in the arts. Structured activities include a materials list, safety concerns, key takeaways, and related readings, as well as explicit connections to research and national standards. With clear and concise lesson plans that walk you through activities in music, dance, media arts, visual arts, and theater, it becomes easy to bring development and learning through movement and creativity to your classroom or program.

Find out all there is to know about your favourite creepy-crawlies with these exciting craft projects! Follow the step-by-step instructions to make spiders, beetles, dragonflies, termites and much more! You can even create displays for your classroom or at home. Each project uses materials that are easy to source, and you will be introduced to loads of craft techniques. The book also contains photos and facts about minibeasts.

Children will delight in learning how to write the alphabet alongside Todd Parr's vibrant art. D is for Dog...but it's wearing a pair of underwear! Each page will give the child several opportunities to trace and write the letter in upper and lowercase with silly pictures as reference. This sturdy board book includes wipe-clean pages and a wipe-clean marker with eraser that clips into the book.

The wheels on the bus go round and round Everyone knows the song. But now the bus is going around beautiful New Zealand and its passengers you just might know: kiwi, penguin, tuatara, fantail and many more. Come along for the ride For pre-schoolers.