Here are some links to sites which we think will be helpful and/or interesting. We've only chosen a handful of the myriad available. Some of them have extensive links to other sites and can be good places to begin your searches.
Birding About Great educational site with a good section on observing birds in the backyard. Lists questions to encourage keen observation and record keeping.
Owl Pages Everything you wanted to know about Owls including Mythology. There’s even a sound gallery.
Artist Joanne Hook Official web site of Australian artist Joanne Hook who has developed a style based on her love of colour, pattern and design, combined with her love of composition, and the inspiration of the lush surrounds of Reef and Rainforest.
Art.com A site primarily for the sale of prints but is also a great reference site which can be viewed sorted by subject (eg animals seasons, botanical) art styles (art movements eg Pop and Post impressionism) or by artist. There is also a Search button. Type in ‘birds.
Bird Paintings Information on the history of bird painting.
Original Bird Art US site with an index to numerous bird artists with great close up images of their artworks.
Bird Feeder Ideas for making simple bird feeders and treats.
Enchanted Learning Excellent simple kids site with interesting information everything. This is their page on birds eg mechanics of flight, heart rate and breathing, evolution etc They charge an annual subscription fee to access some of the resources eg printouts, but a lot is free from craft activity ideas to jokes to ‘fastest, biggest, smallest, heaviest’.
Ethnic Paintings Glossary of artists, painting media and painting styles. Good for information but no illustrations.
Bird Crafts Simple bird craft activities.
Clever Patch CleverPatch site. Loads of Craft Activities and art ideas.
History of Sewing This site has some very interesting facts about the history of sewing. There is information regarding the first use of needles and threads, and what they were made from. The site also explains how people used the needles and threads to sew their clothes, blankets and shelters.
No Sewing arts and crafts Ideas for easy no-sewing arts & crafts projects and activities with scraps of fabric, cloth, yarn, string, velvet, felt, etc with patterns for children, teens, and preschoolers.
Inspiring Fabric Art Very inspiring site mainly for adults but nevertheless well worth looking at beautiful colours and textures. Keep scrolling to the bottom - it just gets better and better.
Natural Dyes Informative site on making natural dyes from plants, with detailed list of plant material and the colours they produce.
Silk Worms This site contains curriculum ideas, silkworm-raising instructions, and the history of silk.
Textile Artists Profiles of textiles artists and designers in New Zealand.
Art Projects Numerous art and craft projects. This humble looking site (no pictures) is truly a goldmine of ideas.
Incredible Art Lessons Numerous Lesson Plans.
Kids Spot Vast Australian site with everything from craft activities and games to support groups to tips on sleep problems, recipes, and with a directory for buying just about anything for babies and children.
Art and Craft K to 6 This is a great site with lots of great art and craft ideas for Kindergarten to Grade 6.
All Fibre Arts An interesting page with a home-made loom made from a cardboard box.
Montessori World This Montessori site has lots of simple and unusual shaped looms eg circular and fan shapes.
Alien Travel Guide The history of cloth weaving in short paragraphs, from the Stone Age to the present.
Georgia College & State University History of Weaving Short introduction to the history of weaving and the development of the weaving loom, from pre-historic times to the present computer-driven loom.
Show me UK site Art and Design Instructions for marbeling, well illustrated.
Your Home.gov.au This site is a technical but readable site explaining passive design principles for home builders in Australia
Australian Endangered Animals Definitions of endangered, extinct species. Photos and eg’s of endangered and extinct Australian animals
Australian Conservation Foundation Great page on Australian Conservation Foundation site with activities for children
WWF Australian homepage
Bagheera Classroom Activities Bagheera is an online education website with lots of activties and lessons
Exit Stage Right Red List of endangered species - what and why - lots of information
Endangered Species Easy to access info re endangered and rare species.
KidsFace How to plant a tree
Andy Warhol Good commentary on Andy Warhol and reproductions of his art
General information on Andy Warhol
Warhol: Education Great site with resources and lesson plans
John Coburn General information and good reproductions of John Coburn's works
Health Authorities recommend that one eats at least 2 serves of fruit and 5 serves of vegetables every day.
A serve of fruit is equal to one medium piece piece of fruit, two smaller pieces or 1 cup of chopped fruit.
A serve of vegetables is equal to one medium potato, ˝ cup cooked vegetables (including legumes) or one cup of salad vegetables.
The amount children should eat depends on their age, appetite and physical activity levels.
According to recent Australian federal government report:
"People who consume diets high in vegetables, fruit and legumes have a substantially lower risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, some cancers, hypertension, type two diabetes, cataracts and macular degeneration of the eye," and "About 11 per cent of cancers in Australia can be attributed to sufferers failing to eat enough fruit and vegetables" Source: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare The Profile of the Nutritional Status of Children and Adolescents 2007.It can take 10-15 exposures to a particular food, such as a fruit or vegetable, before one develops a fondness for it. Here are some excellent tips for easily acquiring a new taste.
One of the most enjoyable ways for children to acquire a taste for fruit and veggies is a Crunch&Sip® break in class. Crunch&Sip® is an initiative of the Western Australian Government departments.
The site www.crunchandsip.com.au has plenty of information and advice for trying out and setting up this very popular programme with your class or school.
Here’s how it works…
Each day children bring fruit (or salad vegetables) to school to eat in the classroom at a set time (during class). Each child also has a small clear bottle of water in the classroom to drink throughout the day to prevent dehydration.
Teachers report that on Crunch&Sip® days, the children seem happier, better behaved, and learn better.
The Fresh for Kids website provides interesting information on fruit and vegetables, as well as fun activities and online games.
Gardening Australia site provides factsheets on growing Fruit and Vegetables, including growing bean sprouts.
Pressure cooking is a very fast, simple and convenient way to cook vegetables. Vegetables can be cooked with dried legumes, grains, herbs etc, in one pot. The faster cooking time also means that less power is required to cook the food. Here is some introductory information on pressure cookers from the business the Pressure Cooker Centre . Here are some cooking times for dried beans, from the Miss Vickie website.
Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC) is a method of measuring antioxidant capacities of different foods. Here is a table of antioxidant activity per calorie, gram etc, for a wide variety of foods, mainly fruits and vegetables. This data is taken from a study published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry 2004 Jun 16;52(12):4026-37. Methods for measuring antioxidant activity are still evolving. Since this large study was completed, newer methods have produced higher ORAC scores for many foods.
An ecological footprint measures how much land is required to supply a person's living and lifestyle needs - that is food, housing, energy/fuel, transport, and consumer goods and services. A personal ecological footprint can be calculated at the NZ Ministry of Environment website.
A Walking School Bus is a fun way to get to school that's healthy for people and our planet. Here is are some Walking School Bus guides provided the Australian government Travel Smart website, and by a local council.
The " Pirates of Compassion ", the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, are currently providing free tours of their ship, the Robert Hunter, in Melbourne. School tours can be arranged for any time of the day.
The Australian Marine Conservation Society has published the illustrated booklet, Australia's Sustainable Seafood Guide. It's not an online resource, however we're providing this link because it's such a valuable, popular and easy-to-use booklet, for those who enjoy seafood, and wish to make the most sustainable choices. It comes with a bonus purse or wallet-sized mini guide.
We have also created some slideshows of inspiring geometric and portrait art, to accompany this year's lesson plans.
An extension for the Cool Collage art unit is the inclusion of a self portrait. Here is a lesson provided by dickblick.com that describes facial proportions.
About.com also provides useful descriptions of facial proportions as well as children's body proportions.
British artist Martin Dace has created a flash animation which shows body proportions changing with age, from birth to adult.
Mexican artist Frida Kahlo first started painting by doing self-portraits, painting some fifty-five of them through her life, including her Self Portrait 1929. Her most recognisable facial feature was her pair of long eyebrows.
Here are a couple of sites providing more information about tessellations, including terminology, varieties of tessellations and their mathematics: www.coolmath.com/tesspage1.htm and http://mathforum.org/sum95/suzanne/whattess.html.
Jo Edkins has provided some sample tesselation patterns; as well as online interactive tessellation-making using squares or triangles, and to create a snowflake tessellation and an Escher-style tesselation.
Tesselations have been traditionally employed in the making of patchwork quilts. Here is a catalogue of quilt patterns, such as the feather edged star. Here is an optical illusion Escher-style quilt pattern.
Patchwork quilting is a traditional artform for which the Amish are famous. Here are some Amish quilts, with geometric patterns, including tesselations.
Here are some modern painters whose work contains some geometric design:
Miro... Inverted Personages – 1949
There is a large compilation of images of Miro's art at allposters.com.
Here is a customisable screen saver featuring fifteen other Miro images, which can be used as a slide show: www.screensavershot.com/art15.htm
In explaining her work, Op Art painter Bridget Riley has stated "In my earlier paintings, I wanted the space between the picture plane and the spectator to be active. It was in that space, paradoxically, the painting 'took place'...".
Here is a biography of this artist, with ten of her works, including Movement in Squares, 1961.
Here is a compilation of thirty-two of her artworks: http://nadav.harel.org.il/Bridget_Riley/.
Here is a work of New Zealand artist, Simon Morris - Acrylic on Aluminium, 1994.
Here are some links to Early Childhood art lesson plans:
http://members.tripod.com/~Patricia_F/art.html
http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/lessons/early/early.html
http://www.edu-orchard.net/PROFESS/LESSON/ARTS/KR/krearly.html
Here are some ancient Hawaiian petroglyphs from the island of Lanai, and from some other locations in Hawaii.
Here is the work of two contemporary artists whose work is inspired by Hawaiian petroglyphs, and which incidentally involves techniques that simulate the iridescent colours of the natural stone. Wes Bogner creates petroglyphic shapes with layers of acrylic paint. Frank Andrews translates the shapes of ancient petroglyphs into copper sculptures.
Here are some more petroglyph shapes (the captions under the symbols are interpretive).
Here are some more advanced lesson extensions for petroglyph and Hawaiian art lessons, for making petroglyphs on simulated lava, and making tapa cloth.
A definition of watercolour and a collection of examples of this technique, can be found at www.artlex.com (click on 'watercolor' on left menu). Some examples of watercolours include:
Thomas Gainsborough's Cart passing along a winding road, Hans Bol's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.
Vasily Kandinsky's watercolours Watercolor (Number 13) and Untitled (First Abstract Watercolor).
Some of Raoul Dufy's watercolours can be seen at http://www.weinstein.com/dufy/images.html.
1001freefonts.com offers fonts that may be freely downloaded to use in this unit. At this site, click on a round button to reach fonts arranged alphabetically by name.
www.fontfreak.com is another site with free fonts. At this site, click on a button on the navigation bar on the left, for a suitable catagory of font. Free fonts on this site are labelled as 'freeware'.
Eric Carle The official website of the artist and writer best known for the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Carle uses hand-painted papers which he cuts and layers to form bright and cheerful images.
Eric Carle inspired painted collage A lesson plan for Painted Collage by teacher Linda Wood.
Sonia Katz is contemporary artist who creates abstract collage paintings.
The following sites are of generally use for the Picasso Faces unit and include specific art works referred to in the unit.
www.artlex.com is an on-line art dictionary with information about individual artists, and art movements such as Cubism.
It contains links to artworks referred to in the Picasso Faces Art Unit: The Sewer by Fernand Léger (1909) and Bust of a Woman by Pablo Picasso (1907).
www.artchive.com for Portrait of a girl by Pablo Picasso (1914).
Guggenheim Museum and the Tate Gallery for Braque images.
www.artcyclopedia.com for information on Fernand Léger, a California State Unversity site for a brief biography and nine of his Paintings, and www.arts-studio.com for seventeen of his paintings. The Metropolitan Museum for Léger's painting Woman with a Cat (1921).
www.picasso.com and www.soho-art.com for hundreds of Picasso images.
www.prints.co.nz New Zealand Print Warehouse, for prints of Robyn Kahukiwa's artwork.
Kel.otago.ac.nz/translator Has an English/ Maori online dictionary.
www.whaleriderthemovie.com Has an excellent teacher resource for class cinema viewing.
www.maori.org.nz Information on protocol, customs and traditions, as well as many educational resources, including legends, language quizes, images, songs, traditional games and links.
www.kiwinetnz.com and www.nzbooks.com for online ordering of New Zealand books including the picture book Paikea by Robyn Kahukiwa, which is being reprinted at the moment and will be available by the end of June.
www.marshall.edu/akanart/akanartintro2.html Many lesson plans. On-line purchasing of the book ‘Cloth As Metaphor’ cataloguing over 700 Adinkra symbols and their meaning.
www.pbs.org/wnet/africa/tools/guide.html Large site with a collection of lesson plans, music, folk tales and lots of links to African music sites.
faldo.atmos.uiuc.edu/CLA/LESSONS/3806.html Lesson plan using potato prints to make Adrinka cloth.
www.ghana.co.uk/history/history/tribes.htm Mainly history, culture and religion of Ghana. Also history and pictures of Kente cloth.
www.oxfam.org.uk/coolplanet/ontheline/schools/adinkra/adinkrah.htm Oxfam site with lesson on Adrinka potato prints, history of Adrinka and explanation of symbols.
www.ghanaguide.org/artculture/kente.asp History and significance of Ghana's kente cloth. Images of weaving patterns and their meaning.
www.dickblick.com/multicultural/adinkrapillows/ Lesson for older children using handmade rubber stamps, acrylic paint and fabric dye to make strips which are sewn together to make a pillow.
www.welltempered.net/adinkra/htmls/adinkra/nkon.htm for Adinkra Symbols & Meanings.
quattro.me.uiuc.edu/~fog/adinkra.html For symbols and their meaning.
www.kiwinetnz.com and www.nzbooks.comfor online ordering of New Zealand books including the picture book Paikea by Robyn Kahukiwa, which is being reprinted at the moment and will be available by the end of June.
www.mosaico.net/brunetta/mosaic.htm With images of mosaics inspired by Ravenna mosaics
www.sira.it/mosaic/gallery.htm For images of reproductions of ancient Roman
and Byzantine mosaics
www.umamosaics.com Spectacular site with inspiring modern mosaic designs
www.bamm.org.uk Large site with many links worldwide and lots of historical information.
www.bamm.org.uk/australasia/mosaic_art_of_brett_campbell.htm Linked to the above site with some simple inspiring images for children.
www.stainedglasswarehouse.com/mosaics.html Some interesting images of mosaics.
www.chineseculture.about.com Vast site with lots of myths, legends, proverbs, folk arts and information on dragons.
www.chinavoc.com Another big site with information on Chinese dragon culture, Chinese astrology, images of dragons, Chinese customs and festivals and popular games.
www.travelchinaguide.com/intro/arts/cloisonne.htm Information on the Cloisonné process. Includes images of cloisonne pots.
www.asianartmall.com/refsymbols.htm Information on Chinese images and their meaning.
www.thegalleryofchina.com For lots of popular Chinese images and their meaning.
Aboriginal Art and Culture Centre The Southern Arrernte Aboriginal tribal group site whose homelands are situated 100kms south of Alice Springs in Central Australia. Information on Aboriginal culture with an online shop selling art, crafts, books and music.
Aboriginal Australia - Teaching & Learning for information on Aboriginal culture. Explores sensitive issues. Online shop for books, CD's, videos and CD -ROMs.
Aboriginal Culture A site published by Roebourne School in Western Australia. Includes audios of Aboriginal music and some Yindjibarndi words.
Aboriginal Flag Information on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island flags.
Artforkids This site is a good jumping off point for information on artistic cultures world-wide. Includes many lesson plans and teaching resources.
AskAsia Homepage Offers a wide variety of educational resources for the classroom, including lesson plans, readings, and resource centre locator.
Badastronomy.com A great introduction to the solar system which is, after all, where we get all of our calendars from.
BBC Education Web Guide is a searchable directory of over 3000 of the best websites for learning, selected and reviewed by subject specialists.
Creative New Zealand (Arts Council) For information on Maori, Pacific Island art with some historical information.
Curriculum Resources An Australian site with links to many Education sites - well worth visiting.
Education planet If you have time to surf the web this page collects resources relevant to children's art which are available on line.
GettesArtsednet includes a variety of teaching materials including many art images.
Kidlink.org A compendium of holidays around the world and what they mean with an easy to use index.
Kids Helping Kids Unicef site with great ideas for raising self esteem and empowering children to create a peaceful world.
KinderArt Lesson plans for Kindergarten and Primary age children.
National Library of New Zealand Includes catalogues of library resources available to teachers.
Pacifika Press Catalogue Online shopping specialising in Pacific Island literature.
Savina Hopkins is a Melbourne based visual artist who is inspired and influenced by natural history. She has created artwork for Kids Art Work teaching resources, including sample artworks, illustrations and the colourful icons on the calendars.
School Supplies - Online Store A New Zealand site with a large catalogue of art supplies and some lesson plans.
Schoolhouse - Lesson Plans for Teachers by Encarta Online Encyclopaedia on line with lesson plans.
Seds.lpl.arizona.edu/nineplanets/nineplanets/nineplanets A great introduction to the solar system which is, after all, where we get all of our calendars from.
Social Studies Lesson Plans & Ideas American site which includes some interesting lessons on human rights issues.
The @rt gallery Great ideas for 'thinking like an artist'
The Incredible Art Department A large site with many lesson plans, information on artists, artistic styles/periods with many links - well worth the browse.
Welcome to Curriculum Corporation of Australia Interesting site with lesson plans and a good section on indigenous resources.
Webexhibits.org/calendars/s A great site which gives interesting and informative information on the background of various calendars around the world.