I am really pleased to announce the availability of the second ‘Teaching Themes‘ section on my Teaching Ideas site. Last month’s World Cup theme was incredibly popular and the resources are all still online if you would like to use them. This month, the theme is Myst:

www.teachingideas.co.uk/themes/myst

The Myst series of computer games can be extremely valuable teaching tools and they are becoming incredibly popular in classrooms around the world, thanks to Tim Rylands. The characters, landscapes and storylines in the games can all be used to enhance learning in a wide range of curriculum areas. My new Teaching Theme area currently has more than 80 Myst-related teaching ideas, display resources, educational videos, online applications, photographs of classroom displays and links to other useful sites. I hope that the new theme will help you to use these wonderful games with your children.

We’ve already started working on next month’s theme, which is ‘Summer at the Seaside‘. If you have any ideas, resources or links which might be useful for the World Cup, Myst or Summer themes, please get in touch. Thank you!

For the fifth year running, development charity Sightsavers, is inviting primary school children across the UK to take part in the 2010 Junior Painter of the Year competition and paint their vision of the future.

The competition, run by Sightsavers in partnership with the Royal Academy Schools, aims to promote the use of paint in school classrooms, whilst encouraging children to reflect on sight and blindness amongst their peers. Last year over 15,000 entries were submitted by children aged 4-11 and this year’s theme Visions of the Future is set to generate even more.

The winning young painters will have their work exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, alongside works by the famous artist and illustrator Quentin Blake CBE, and the renowned artist and Keeper of the Royal Academy of Arts, Professor Maurice Cockrill RA.

www.sightsavers.org/juniorpainter

Three national winners, one from each category (4-7 years, 8-9 years and 10-11 years), will be selected from a list of regional winners.  They will then enjoy a fun-packed day out in London with their teachers in the autumn and attend the awards ceremony at the Royal Academy of Arts where their paintings will be the central focus of the exciting exhibition. Plus one lucky teacher will win a one-of-a-kind painting by Professor Cockrill in a new award category for 2010 called the Maurice Cockrill award. This will be presented to the teacher who has inspired their pupils’ creativity the most when developing the theme.

Schools interested in participating in the awards this year can find more at: www.sightsavers.org/juniorpainter or by contacting the Junior Painter of the Year competition Helpline on 01444 446 768 for a free awards pack.  Entries must be submitted by 14 September 2010.

Cyberkidz is a Dutch ‘edutainment’ site with lots of educational games, covering Maths, Literacy, Geography, Art, Music and more. The games are sorted by subject and age range, suitable for children aged 4-11.

www.cyberkidz.net

The site has recently been translated into English, so even more children are now able to take advantage of these resources.

The Art Classroom is a wonderful blog about art and design in secondary schools. It is run by David Dunlop and shows the day to day workings of an art classroom.

There are lots of examples of student work, as well as unit plans and ideas for other schools to try. Take a look and leave some comments about the work that is shared.

One Million Giraffes is an online project in which one person is hoping to collect 1 million giraffes by 2011. People are sending pictures of their giraffes (which can’t be created on a computer) and at the time of writing, the collection has reached over 250,000!

Could your class get involved?

• Ask each child to draw one giraffe… or maybe more! This could be as part of an Art activity or set as homework.
• Think of creative ways of making giraffes… they don’t have to be hand-drawn but they cannot be made using a computer.
• Explore the giraffe images on the site… how were they made? Could your pupils create their own giraffes using similar techniques?

Get your pupils involved and have one of their giraffes as part of the million!

Ideas to Inspire now has over 500 ideas! The site originally started as somewhere to host my ‘Ideas to Inspire Writing‘ presentation. Since then, Tom Barrett, Doug Belshaw, Mark Clarkson, Joe Rowing, Tony Cassidy and Noel Jenkins have kindly allowed me to add their presentations to the site, which all receive hundreds of visitors each day.

The site is expanding at an incredible rate. I try to update the RSS feed regularly, and this week over 50 new ideas have been added, with three brand new presentations! If you haven’t seen the site yet, take a look… if you haven’t contributed to one of the presentations, please get in touch the creator – their details are usually on the first or last page of each presentation.

UPDATE – There are now more than 1000 ideas to inspire on the site!

Hartbeat presenter and artist Tony Hart died yesterday, aged 83. He had suffered from ill health, including two strokes in recent years, and died peacefully in the early hours of the morning, according to his agent.

Hart inspired generations of budding artists over his 50-year television career through programmes such as Vision On, Take Hart and Hartbeat, before retiring in 2001 due to ill health. His agent, Roc Renals, said his health had recently been in decline and he had been taken to hospital with a chest infection. He described Hart as a "kind man" who was single-minded in his dedication to his work.

You can watch a tribute to Tony Hart on YouTube.

The British Association for Modern Mosaic (BAMM) is running a mosaic competition which is open to primary school aged children.
   
The
competition is called MEGA MOSAIC MAKERS 2008 and it is
nationwide. They are aiming to raise the profile of mosaic art in
schools, with the principle of getting children interested at a young
age. It is  open to groups/organisations/workshops who work with
children under the age of eleven. Both teachers and students are
awarded prizes, which have been provided by the sponsor, Topps Tiles.
There is a group and an individual category. 

This year’s entry is open from now until 7th Nov 2008, and work can have been completed anytime in the last three years.

Link: http://www.bamm.org.uk/portal/content.asp?ContentId=1103

Ten areas around the country are to pilot the Government’s £25 million Find your Talent programme to give young people the chance to encounter a range of high-quality cultural experiences for five hours a week both in and outside of school. Children in the pilot areas will be able to discover and develop their talents in the cultural sphere.

In time, the Government wants all young people to have the right to experience five hours of arts and culture every week.

The ten lead organisations chosen as pilots are:

• Bolton Borough Council;
• The Creative Foundation (serving Shepway District and including Folkestone, Hythe and Romney Marsh);
• Customs House (North and South Tyneside);
• Hampshire County Council;
• Leeds Children’s Services;
• Leicestershire County Council;
• ‘Liverpool City Region’ Partnership (serving three Merseyside neighbourhoods);
• North Somerset;
• Telford and Wrekin Council; and
• Tower Hamlets.

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