I am looking for clip art for InDesign projects. I need objects that will not block the use of words and can also go on top of other objects.
Please help me. It’s a school project. Thanks all!
What child doesn’t enjoy cutting up paper, peeling off stickers, or stamping? Students of any age and ability level love every opportunity to work with arts and crafts. For this school year, try guiding some of your child’s creative spirit into scrapbooking and paper crafts. Scrapbooking is a wonderful way to spend time with your children, share a favorite activity, and reinforce skills learned in school. Scrap Chic Boutique, (www.scrapchicboutique.com), an independently owned scrapbook store located in Decatur, Georgia, was founded by four special education teachers who know the Georgia Performance Standards curriculum and know how to accommodate to meet individual needs. Kids and adults can take classes or get individual assistance on projects.
Typically, we think of scrapbooking as a way to preserve memories and tell stories through the use of photographs. However, with the variety of supplies and tools available in today’s scrapbook market, the possibilities are endless. Below is a list of ideas that will allow your young scholar, with or without special needs, to use imagination and develop their skills at the same time.
1. At any grade and ability level, students must learn vocabulary words whether they are matching pictures, spelling words, or learning definitions. Unique vocabulary cards can be a breeze to make, especially with die cutting tools in shapes of circles, tags, stars, and more. This hand-on approach is so much more fun than the traditional (and rather dull) index cards. Most scrapbook stores, especially independently owned stores, have a selection of die cuts that you can use in the store. Each set of words can be on a different color of cardstock or in a different shape; then, use a D-Ring to clip them together. TEACHER TIP: When they know the word independently, let your budding student add a button or a ribbon to the card to bolster their sense of pride. Add pictures from clip art or cut out of magazines to more difficult words to give your kids a visual representation of what the word means and a context for its use.
2. Kids need notebooks for every subject, and kids with learning disabilities tend to have poor organizational skills. Why not start the year by decorating the front of the notebooks using colorful patterned papers and stickers? It’s not a guarantee, but your child is less likely to lose something that they have invested time in making- and if they do misplace it, a decorated notebook is much easier to find in the lost and found stack! TEACHER TIP: Use a heavy cardstock to make a pocket to glue inside the back cover. Loose sheets of homework or papers that need to be signed can be put in the pocket.
3. Children with mild to moderate cognitive delays often need repetition and picture clues to help them learn new concepts. Cardstock can be cropped down and run through a printer which provides an added texture for kinesthetic learners. Students can trace words printed on the page, then re-write the word in several ways- stickers, stamps, pens, or markers. TEACHER TIP: Put the picture on a separate piece of card stock from the word to create a quick matching game or sequence activity. Let your student stamp the back of the card each time they get it correct.
4. Students with Autism or pervasive developmental disorders may prefer to point rather than verbalize their thoughts. Create an accordion book with photos of choices for activities. It is also a colorful way to display the daily schedule. Arrows can be used to point to the specific activity. TEACHER TIP: Have the student participate in making the display. If they like the texture of the glue, let them have a hand in glueing it to the page. Advanced students who prefer computer graphics can print on their own cardstock or use templates for digital scrapbooks.
5. To address speech and articulation problems, try making a mini-album with cut outs of pictures that go along with the skill being worked on. As the child shares their album with family and friends they will automatically be practicing- and thereby improving- on their learning objectives. A mini-album may consist of 8 pages that are just 4 by 4 squares. TEACHER TIP: Have a stack of pictures already separated into categories such as S sounds, R blends, antonyms, synonyms, etc. The student spends time working on the goal rather than looking for pictures.
6. For children who have quite a few service provides, make a special picture book with a scrapbook page for each teacher and therapist. Each page should include a photograph- even better if it can be a picture of the teacher and student together! TEACHER TIP: Leave space for a journaling block on each page so each person can include a positive message as your child makes progress. At the end of the year, it will be like a personalized progress report.
7. Often students with Attention Deficit Disorders have difficulty with multi-step projects. Ask the teacher if the project can be modified. Rather than completing a project on poster board which may be too big of a space, they might complete several pages in an 12 by 12 album to display their knowledge of the topic. TEACHER TIP: Ask your local scrapbook store about ways to make unique stickers- this way you can take any topic and make stickers from clip art or die cuts.
8. Although scrapbooking is primarily a visual craft, there are many textures that can be incorporated for students with visual impairments. Students may use textured papers, felt flowers, buttons, or raised stickers to create interactive projects. Cardstock and other papers can be embossed, too. TEACHER TIP: For younger students learning to count, use number stickers and buttons to assist with counting. Use pop-dots as an adhesive that will create a raised effect on the pages.
9. Celebrate success all throughout the year. Use an album with at least 10 pages- one for each month of the school year. Together, you and your child can decide what important lesson, event, or accomplishment to highlight on the page. Take pictures of completed projects, good test scores, friendships made, positive notes from the teachers, or school events. TEACHER TIP: Leave a space for your kids to journal; it will be interesting to watch how their handwriting changes from August to May!
The ideas presented can be modified for specific needs or learning outcomes. For specific questions, you can e-mail info@scrapchicboutique.com, see the calendar of events at www.scrapchicboutique.com, or call 404-378-2115. Learning is about remembering- use scrapbooking to engage your child in “The Art of Remembering”- the results will last a lifetime.
Kelly lives with her five-year-old daughter, in metro Atlanta. Ms. Standridge is the co-owner of Scrap Chic Boutique, located at 906 W College Ave in Decatur, GA 30030. She has been a special education teacher for 10 years and holds an EdS in Teacher Leadership. Visit www.scrapchicboutique.com
Art in children encourages them to develop the creative part of their brain. Many students as they progress through elementary school stop drawing for a variety of reasons. Maybe they think their picture isn’t as good as the student next to them, but most of all it is because they are in an “idea drought”. They just need some help coming up with the initial idea and then their minds can take off.
One way I found to cure this “idea drought” was to generate an “ART START”. Using my computer I selected a piece of clip art and then put a title on the page such as: The small picture of a castle in the corner and then the title of My Castle, or the small picture of a pumpkin and titled it “My Jack-o-Lantern”. Just enough to give the child and idea and then they developed and built on that idea.
I designed a whole folder of ideas so that I could pull one quickly on a busy Monday morning. We took about 5 minutes and talked about the subject and ideas of what would be appropriate in that particular picture. The students were given the whole week to develop and expand on their idea during their spare time. Some got so excited that they took them home and worked especially hard on them even though they rarely took homework home.
The students were encouraged to use the paper as a canvas like an artist. They were to cover the whole page and should be proud enough of their work to sign it on the front. The use of color was encouraged
The real fun came when they were completed at the end of the week. I designed a title page for each art start and laminated it so I could use it from year to year. Then I three hole punched everything and inserted them into a big binder. The binder was put at the back of the room on a table where frequent visitors to the class would sit or at parent teacher conferences it was placed in the hall where parents who were waiting could browse through the book. The outsiders loved the book, but the students loved it more and would spend time when available browsing through the book enjoying each others art and ideas. You would hear comments such as “That’s a good idea” “I never thought of it that way” “look at all the detail”. Each week we added to the book and it was always full of fresh ideas.
The only problem was the time element. It took a lot of time to come up with ideas so if you can find them already made for you it is well worth your time.
Resource Box – Caroline Mackay 2006
Caroline Mackay is a retired teacher of thirty seven years and writer and producer of many school programs. She is the host of http://www.ezeducationplays.com/articles.html
And http://www.ezelectronicelements.com/page/page/3966316.htm
My goal was to encourage the students’ involvement, provide parents with key information, and generally improve the parents’ and students’ experience. I found my answer in ToonUps animated clip art. By incorporating ToonUps in my email newsletters and classroom Power Point presentations, I caught the parents’ attention on back to school night, and am keeping the students’ attention in the classroom!
For our annual Back to School Night I incorporated a classroom Power Point presentation with the students’ images and voices welcoming their parents and talking about what they are enjoying about Kindergarten. I can still remember the fun reactions of the parents as they saw their children in their new school environment talking to them via animated clip art!
As a Kindergarten teacher, the relationship I develop with their parents is critical to their success. This relationship starts with Kindergarten Orientation. Using a classroom Power Point template to deliver my presentation with ToonUps, made all the difference. I added fun ToonUps clipart designed for teachers to break the ice, introduce myself, and discuss what their children would be learning this year in Kindergarten.
As a teacher, ToonUps provides me with much more than just animated clip art images to use as teaching tools.. The full product line includes downloadable high quality cartoon clip art images, innovative PowerPoint backgrounds and templates, and animated clip art to which any user can add their own photos and edit their own audio. Can you imagine – customizable clipart that allows you to add images that may include your own photo, photo of students and even their own voices? This was more than I was looking for and am using this product throughout the year.
This year instead of our typical announcement about Kindergarten Orientation, I reached out with bulk emails to all parents. I used ToonUps this year as part of these emails. I downloaded the editable clipart images and added my own picture. I used my own talking head to remind my parents of upcoming events in a fun way!
In addition to this, for an upcoming field trip to the local zoo, I am sending families a ToonUps animated eCard as a reminder and including those with fun animal images! The ecard includes a list of things the students will need to bring. The ToonUp animated clip art is great for email messages that remind parents that students need to turn in their picture money, party money, book order or a form for the office. It’s such a great way to prioritize our student’s needs and communicate with parents at the same time!
I love to use ToonUps Animations as an interactive introduction to classroom lessons. I took pictures of each of my students and added them to ToonUps YouStar clip art. Each student’s image is used to introduce topics or lessons. Their pictures are on characters that are dressed for the topic! This is so much more engaging and will spark their interest right off the bat. George Washington himself can co-star with me in my PowerPoint and help history lessons come alive.
In Kindergarten, we spend a lot of time focusing on social interaction and making good choices. I use the ToonUps animated clip art in Power Point presentations to create problem solving scenarios. After we watch the scenarios, we discuss the best ways to solve the problem using cooperation.
The holidays are just around the corner. I love the ToonUps animated holiday e-cards to email holiday greetings to parents and teachers throughout the year. Birthdays are always exciting in the life of a student. With Toonups birthday e-cards it’s so much fun to wish my students a happy birthday! I enjoy the e-cards for my colleagues too. It’s a time saver and fun way to let these important people know I am thinking about them during the busy school year. They are so easy to put together and my students and their parents love getting them!
To keep students’ attention she created a classroom trivia game using the Historical cartoons in a classroom power point presentation! The kids loved the fun images, and sound effects. It keeps their attention, makes them laugh, and aids in retention of information!
As you can probably tell, ToonUps animated clip art is a big part of my school year! I feel lucky to have found these great teacher tools. They are easy to use, easy to customize and fun to view. Just a few simple clicks and you can download something that is will change the way you communicate with students, parents and colleagues. For more information and to start animating your clip art presentations, visit www.toonups.com and get started!
Debbie Sachar is entering her 16th Year of teaching. She has her Bachelor’s Degree in Early Childhood Education.and Psychology and a Master’s Degree in Reading.
One of the greatest challenges that educators face is how to encourage students to use the tremendous resources available online and, at the same time, ensure that the student experience is safe and appropriate. There are literally millions of clip-art images available for download across hundreds of sites. But which ones are appropriate for school clip-art projects? And, how do we, as educators, control access to online sources regarding downloabable images and clip-art?
First, someone at the individual school level needs to be responsible for developing and implementing policies regarding surfing and downloading and cleary delineate what is appropriate and what is not. The policy should be in writing and distributed to all teachers and students. A small committee of a few teachers and students should periodically review the policy and adjust as necessary given the school’s ongoing computer needs and use.
Second, clip-art images, photo clip art and gifs, creating avatars, etc. should be approved before downloading to the school computer network or printed out on the school’s printers. Nothing is more disruptive than inappropriate images being spread quickly throughout the student population, either through hard copies or file-sharing.
Third, at the school computer network level, permissions should be set regarding access to approved urls. Particularly with regard to image and clip-art sites, the school should compile a list of kid-safe and educational sites. Only these sites should be accessible at school. Teachers and students can always recommend sites to be added to the permission list.
Following these basic suggestions, teachers and students should be able to explore, create and present ideas safely and appropriately, using the school’s resources to foster growth and learning.
To get you started with some specific safe site recommendations, please visit www.clip-art.info
Articles and resources at clip-art.info
