Break 3: The Art of Learning

Extended deadline 10 June: still time to enter Young Illustrator Book Cover Competition

Jo Plimmer — Fri, 24 May 2013 18:02:14 +0000

We’ve had great fun at after school illustration workshops this week, with some inspired young illustrators joining us at Norton St Philip and St Louis schools. Journeys and quests have ranged from Pippi Longstocking to The Hunger Games.

There is still time to do your own masterpiece, to tempt people to discover the book you love.

Especially as we have extended our deadline to Monday 10th June.

Need inspiration? Or just like creating stuff with other people?

Come to our final workshop at Rook Lane Chapel Saturday 8th June 10am – 2pm.

Illustrators to inspire: Lauren Child

Jo Plimmer — Thu, 09 May 2013 09:54:12 +0000

Advice for budding illustrators thinking about it as a career from Lauren Child.

http://www.milkmonitor.com/help/

Make sure you take a wander around her beautiful web-site too.

Any illustrators local or far away you’d like to us to share, particularly their top tips, please let us know.

PS Look at her Green Drops and Moonsquirters exhibition too. A 3D illustrated world.

Who we are working with: Real Ideas Organisation

Jo Plimmer — Wed, 01 May 2013 13:47:28 +0000

Frome Community Learning Partnership schools are also firing up reading through this year with Alys and Lisa from the Real Ideas Organisation (RIO) with a range of opportunities to get involved, ranging from extreme reading competitions (won by Felix Piper from Oakfield Academy and who rowed into the middle of a lake at Marston Bigot to read the latest Tom Gates book ‘Genius Ideas’ by L. Pichon), on-line publishing and X Factor book challenges.

Most recently Year 4 and 5 children came to meet story teller Tony Dallas.

‘Tony was a really fun and inspiring man and all the children really enjoyed their day and represented their schools fantastically well. A particular well done and thank you must go to the First School children who were confident enough to visit another school for the workshops and to Oakfield and Selwood Academies who were excellent hosts for the two days. The children have now gone away excited to run the X Factor style reading challenge in their schools, where they will try to get as many people as they can to read their favourite book!’

Alys Parkins, RIO

Find out more about RIO and the activities Frome area schools have been doing with them at Snapshot Magazine.

Top illustrating tips: Nadine Wickenden

Jo Plimmer — Wed, 01 May 2013 12:58:46 +0000

We are delighted that illustrator Nadine Wickenden has agreed to be the judge for our Young Illustrator competition. Nadine’s style incorporates traditional watercolour and mixed media collage.

“I have a passion for textiles and colour, and I love being able to swap back and forth between my brushes and my scissors and glue”.

These are her top tips for illustrators of any age…

Always make rough sketches or doodles of your ideas for a picture before you begin.
Don’t over complicate things. A simple image is often more powerful.
Pay careful attention to your instructions. Remember you are making a picture to serve a purpose.

Good luck, and don’t forget to post your designs with entry form in one of the competition boxes at Hunting Raven bookshop, Frome Library and Rook Lane Arts.

Competition flyers / entry forms can be found at any of the places above and will be available to download here shortly.

Fun with phonics: useful links and downloads

Jo Plimmer — Wed, 01 May 2013 12:55:43 +0000

As artists, it took us a while to get round phonics, even though we’re parents with children in this age group. It’s always hard to support your child’s learning if you’re worried that you’re “not doing it right”. That’s why we helped create the Break 3 reading guide for families in and around Frome.

Phonics is now the main way children are taught to read in the Frome Schools Partnership. Phonics looks at the sounds that letters make when they are put together. For example “oo” in the word “moon”, gives the same sound as “ew” in the word “screw”.

In phonics children are taught to identify and use these sounds to put words together. Depending on how they are doing, and which year group they are in, this will be taught differently at different stages. At each stage children are encouraged to discover and learn patterns themselves.

This phonic table was edited out of our Family Reading Guide, but looks nice and is really useful for reference.

Fooling around with phonics guide

Supporting your child’s learning can feel stressful! We think the best way to learn together is play together.

Try googling “phonics games” for fun ways to learn together – here are some useful ones:

http://www.familylearning.org.uk/phonics_games.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/wordsandpictures/phonics/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks1/literacy/phonics/play

http://www.teachers.tv/video/27626

http://www.jollylearning.co.uk

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storyCode=6195579&s_cid=Landing_PhonicsScreen12

Break 3 Reading Guide: extracts

Jo Plimmer — Wed, 01 May 2013 12:27:27 +0000

Back in February we created a new local reading guide for families, which includes great ideas and suggestions from local teachers, librarians, parents and children.

The Break 3 Reading Guide is being given to all families with children in years 4, 5, 6 and 7 in the Frome First and Middle schools and Academies, distributed through school and alongside ‘Fooling around with Phonics’ workshops with artists Sasha Laskey and Lucia Harley.

The first of these took place as part of National Libraries Day at Frome Library on Saturday 9^th February.

Here are some poster size images from our Reading guide which you may find useful. If you are in the Frome area, have children in this age group, and haven’t received a guide yet, let us know and we’ll get them to your school.

Break3familyreadingguideextracts

Young Illustrator Competition Flyer

Jo Plimmer — Wed, 01 May 2013 12:06:24 +0000

You can pick up competition flyers around Frome at the library, Hunting Raven Bookshop and Rook Lane Arts.

Or you can download your Young Illustrator Competition flyer and entry form by clicking the link below.

Illustrators Competition (PDF)

Tales of journeys to inspire

Jo Plimmer — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 22:42:42 +0000

Karin Campagna from Frome’s wonderful Hunting Raven Bookshop has given the following suggestions to inspire your book cover ideas for our Break 3 Young Illustrators competition.

Search out some of these great books below in your library or bookshop to start you imagining, or let us know your own book suggestions. Featured above is Shaun Tan’s wonderful ‘The Lost Thing’.

Design a cover for your favourite book about a JOURNEY or a QUEST, and don’t forget to drop your entries off by Monday 3rd June in the competition boxes at Hunting Raven Bookshop, Rook Lane Arts and Frome Library.

The deadline is Monday 3rd of June, but you can start posting your entries as soon as you like.

Under 7 age group

Who Am I? by Gervase Phinn & Illustrated by Tony Ross
The Way Back Home Written & Illustrated by Oliver Jeffers
The Diabolical Mr Tiddles Written & Illustrated by Tom McLaughlin
The Lost Thing Written & Illustrated by Shaun Tan (shown above)

7-10 age group
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by Ian Fleming
Clockwork by Philip Pullman
The Sleeping Army by Francesca Simon
Tree Soup by Joel Stewart

11-13 age group
Kit’s Wilderness by David Almond
The Dark Horse by Marcus Sedgwick
I, Coriander by Sally Gardner
Frog by Joffre White

14-18 age group
The Feathered Man by Jeremy de Quidt
How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Young Illustrators Competition

Jo Plimmer — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:45:34 +0000

As part of a series of initiatives firing up a passion for reading in children and young people, we’re launching a new competition to find the next generation of illustrating talent.

Frome’s first Young Illustrators’ competition invites young people to show off their imagination and design skills, in the hope of winning a place in a Frome Festival exhibition . The competition is supported by the Interalia Centre, Hunting Raven Bookshop, Butler, Tanner and Dennis, Frome Library and Rook Lane Arts Trust, where entries will be exhibited during the Frome Festival.

Budding illustrators up to the age of 18 are invited to design a cover for their favourite book about a quest or a journey. “Although the cover should be for a book you have read, anything goes on how you illustrate it,” says Break 3 Words project manager Jo Plimmer. “Artworks are welcome in any media, from drawing to stitching, to digital or something we haven’t even thought of yet.”

Entries should be on A4 or A3 size paper, and can be posted into competition boxes at Hunting Raven Bookshop, Frome Library and Rook Lane Chapel. Deadline for entries is 3rd June.

The competition will be judged by illustrator Nadine Wickenden.

Short-listed entries in each age category will be exhibited at Rook Lane Arts alongside a major exhibition of literary illustration ‘Out of the Silence’, which will launch during the Frome Festival. Winners will receive prizes of art materials, and a chance to learn about the journey from artwork to book cover with international publishers Butler, Tanner & Dennis.

Illustrators to inspire: Oliver Jeffers

Jo Plimmer — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 11:46:28 +0000

Oliver Jeffers is still one of my favourite and coolest story tellers in words and pictures. He’s just made this great little film about picture books and what he does, and is looking very cool in Brooklyn so we’re sharing it here to inspire you to get creative in our competition.

But REMEMBER! our competition is for a book cover NOT create your own picture book.

Or rather DO create your own picture book if you’re inspired (for yourself and the rest of the world), but we only want your ideas for book covers or jackets (hmmm a jacket for a book….) entered in our competition.