Imagination On the Go

Happy Birthday to you! Create birthday invitations and invite your friends over to celebrate with you. Use the computer to draw, paint, color and add clip art to cards, banners, flyers and more. You can even animate your card and send it by email with the Kid Pix software program. Designed for Kindergarten through sixth grade.

Imagination On the Go enhances A Palette of Fun with Arts and Crafts, a 4-H CCS visual arts curriculum.

• Kid Pix or Kid Pix Deluxe
  Draw, paint, color and cut out your artwork. Even animate it and then put it all together in a slide show. Your Imagination will be on the go with Kid Pix.
  About Software Specifications

• Elements and Principles of Design

• National Content Standards for Education in the Arts

• Artistic Stages of Children

Communicating - exchange of thoughts, information, or messages between individuals; sending and receiving information using speech, writing, gestures, and artistic expression
 
Learning to learn - acquiring, evaluating, and using information; understanding the methods and skills for learning 

Problem solving - clearly identifying a problem and a plan of action for resolution of the problem

Catchy Phrases and Illuminations

Materials: Samples of calligraphy, illuminations, and miniatures Computer, printer, Kids Pix or a paint program. Computer paper Setup: Read through the activity. Display the samples. Open the computer program.

Background

Letters and words are fascinating shapes to play with. You can take one letter from a special font and turn it into a fanciful creature or an elegant design. Often book designers and calligraphers use such a letter at the beginning of a story or phrase. This letter is called an illumination.

Calligraphy means beautiful writing. Before the invention of the printing press, calligraphers copied whole books. They would illuminate some of the letters, decorate margins, and paint miniature illustrations to accompany the text. Calligraphy is still associated with one of a kind hand lettering.

Today, designers have created for computers hundreds of different letter shapes called fonts. Different fonts express different moods to go with the words and phrases. One font is light and flowing, another bold and heavy; one may be right for funny words, another for serious ones. You can use the font of your choice and arrange your favorite phrase in an interesting way. The arrangement is called a lay out. You can add designs to one letter to create your own illumination. You can add decorative border around the phrase.  One you print it out, you can add more color and decoration and then frame it. I t will make a great gift to someone special or a great piece of art to hang in your room.

Ready, Design, Print

1. Find a favorite quote or make up a funny phrase. 

2. Select a font from your computer software that you feel fits the phrase. The Kids’ Pix  fonts are found in the menu A.

3. Type the first letter. Enlarge it. In Kids Pix, the enlarge tool is found under the Mixer.

4.  Use the paint and draw tools in the software program to decorate the letter or change it into something that illustrates the phrase.

5.  Type the rest of the phrase in a smaller font size. Pick out the main words in the phrase. For emphasis, important words may be alone on a line and printed larger or in a different color. Make new lines to group the other words together so that each line helps the reader understand the phrase.

6.  (Optional) Create a decorative border.

7.  Print it.

8.  (Optional) Add color and decoration. Frame.

9.  Display your calligraphy.

• How does your lay out and illumination help others understand the phrase? Describe the different sides of your character. How is making a 3-D character different from drawing one?

• What computer tools did you use to create your design?

• Wrapping Paper

• Greeting Cards from Scraps

• Sanford A Lifetime of Color -  Resources for creative individuals from beginner to advanced.
• Software: 
  • Printshop
  • MS Publisher
  • Hyperstudio, Knowledge Adventure