Palm Leaf Poetry Books--a classroom project

I've already written about the squash-fold hanging poetry books here and here and here. Those were done in a joint project with 2nd and 6th grade classrooms (working in mixed-age pairs). Here's another classroom project I did with the same pair of teachers, two years earlier. Again, it was part of their poetry writing unit. I wrote about it briefly once before, but am updating it to include instructions.

Based on the palm-leaf books of SE Asia, our hanging books had 4 "pages" with mat-board covers top and bottom. We first discussed possible layouts of text and illustrations, and then made draft pages on copy paper sheets in pencil. Second grade students used pages with lines for their text; sixth graders used blank pages. Books were woven together with waxed linen thread leaving a long tail with a button at the top, both for hanging and to wrap around the folded pages when closed. Pages were made from white tag board; covers were cut from colored mat-board. All covers and pages were cut and pre-punched at my local printers. Labels were designed by the students, usually a title on one cover, their name on the other.

Want to try this project in your own classroom? Download instructions, draft sheets and printing sheets here.

Here are some examples of students' books:

Here is a hand-out I made that shows possible layouts of text and illustration.

More poetry books

Here are more photos of the poetry books from Hilltown Charter School. Most of this batch were made by the younger students. 

Students' Books

After five visits to the classroom, and a lot of hard work, our poetry books are completed. I love the range of topics: everything from the ocean to cupcakes, flatscreen tv's to cats and fruit. Here are a few photos of their work. There is one button on the cover with a string attached that wraps around the four corners of the book. The younger students hand wrote their poems. The older students used computer text that was glued into the books. See the previous post for more information about the project.

Youth Mandala Class

I'm just home from a week at Green Acre Baha'i School. In the mornings I helped teach a class to youth about spiritual relationships. In the afternoons, I led an art workshop for youth and we made mandalas. Here are a few photos. Unfortunately, my camera's battery ran out of juice before I could document all of the finished art.

Palm Leaf Poetry Books -- Student Work

DSCN2715, originally uploaded by jeanniehunt.

This is a palm leaf poetry book made during a residency project at the Hilltown Charter School in Haydenville MA during the spring of 2010. These poetry books were made by grade 3 and grade 5 students, based on the palm-leaf books made in SE Asia. Strips of tag-board are woven together with mat-board covers on each end. See more examples, and download instructions  in this post.