I won! YIPEE!

So, it's no great secret that I LOVE MaryAnn Kohl's books, as a few of my lessons have been inspired by those in her books. Her book, "Discovering Great Artists" is one I constantly reference in my lesson plans. You can check out her website to see more of her books at www.brightring.com. Her website also has a section with free art activities. These are samples from her various books and are worth a look.

She also has a monthly newsletter she sends out with timely art projects and activities to do with children. I've been subscribing to her newsletter for a while and this month's Valentine's crafts are great!  One activity she suggests is having a Valentine tea time ready for when the children get home from school. I've done this before with my first son, but I had totally forgotten about it--it's on the agenda for Valentine's Day this year--I think my boys are going to love that!

So, on to my *bragging*...

Every month, MaryAnn has a contest where one newsletter subscriber is chosen at random to receive one of her books, and, TA-DA! This month I won! I won "Science Arts: Discovering Science Through Art Experiments." The book is 140+ pages, organized in the same way as her other books, with great indexes and icons that allow you to cross-reference the different types of art and science components used throughout the book.

The chapters are:

• Water & Air
• Light & Sight
• Motion & Energy
• Reaction & Matter, and
• Nature & Earth

Each activity has a material list and clear directions as well as a list of variations. There is also a blurb with a brief explanation of the science that is going on in the activity. The activities really straddle the line between art and science, and some of them seem like they'd take minutes to do, but are open-ended enough to provide hours of experimenting...

Even if you have MaryAnn's other books, you will be pleasantly surprised with all of these great projects. And this book is not only good for the art classroom, core classrooms can use use this too. I envision grabbing this book frequently during those long winter (and school vacation) days when I'm hearing choruses of "I'm bored!"

**Disclaimer: Yeah, I received this book for free, since I won it as part of a randomly generated contest. I wrote this post not because I received a free book, but because I think it is a book worth reviewing. Please check out my other posts and you'll see I do this from time to time with other books I've borrowed from the library and/or bought myself from various booksellers.**