In celebration of National Reading Month, Whitehouse Primary School presented Right to Imagine Week from March 6-10. Students were challenged to not only build their reading skills, but to put their science, technology, engineering and math (STEAM) skills to work as well.
Local children's author, Merrill Rainey visited each day to encourage students to use their creativity, collaboration and critical thinking skills to design and complete a number of hands-on learning challenges. He also shared what it was like to work as an author and artist and how he uses STEAM skills and the engineering design process to create books.
Kindergarten and 1st Grade:
Mr. Merrill spoke with them about his job as a Picture Book Creator and Paper Toy Maker. Through an interactive activity students learned how he creates his art based on seeing shapes and colors. They saw samples of each stage of his process and the steps he takes to create a final picture book.
2nd Grade:
These students attended a Paper Toy Creation Workshop to learn the fundamentals of paper toy engineering. It focused on teaching students that they can create anything they can imagine by putting a plan in place, then putting their plan into motion. The students were able to design and build their own paper toy character.
3rd and 4th Grade:
The third and fourth grade students learned the process of storyboarding and how to create stop animation movies. Mr. Merrill offered tips and tricks on how to make dynamic scenes and visuals to create their own stop motion movie story.
About Mr. Rainey
Growing up, Merrill Rainey spent most of his Saturday afternoons drawing, watching monster movies, and going on imaginary adventures. Today, he is a cowboy-boot-wearing, picture-book-creator, and paper-toy-maker. Merrill’s work focuses on exploring creativity and imaginative play. Merrill also works for many children’s magazines like Highlights, Cricket, Ranger Rick, and Humpty Dumpty. Merrill lives in the village of Whitehouse, Ohio, with his editor (his wife), subject matter experts (his kids), and very opinionated coworkers (a toad, and a crabby hermit crab). When he can, Merrill likes to enjoy a good sandwich and has a small addiction to tater tots.