Creating Line Designs - Book 4
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Category Description for Creating Line Designs
Okay, so you might start using these books as a means of teaching your children how to draw straight lines with a ruler. (Some call these “pre-drafting” skills). But they are also helpful in reinforcing the top-to-bottom and left-to-right orientation needed for reading and for general success in our top-to-bottom-left-to-right culture! They also serve as great exercises in following directions and provide experience in completing several small tasks to accomplish a quality finished product. But this isn’t why kids enjoy them so much. Canvassing my own children yielded the following insights; “It’s really neat that, just by connecting the dots, you can create a design like that,” “I liked drawing the lines,” “they were really neat,” and “it was fun coloring in the designs.” There you have it, from the “experts.” Books progress in difficulty both in design and technique. In book one, pairs of numbers are connected. In volume two, pairs of letters and numbers are connected (more lines). By book three, designs require you to lift your pencil at some parts along the line to create the proper drawing. In book four, designs are even more elaborate. Reproducible.
Customer Review
Creating Line Designs is a wonderful resource. We own the entire set and my kids would list this as one of their all-time favorite school activities. My two oldest kids (ages 10 and 9) have slowly worked their way through all of book one and about half of the way through book two during the last two school years. Although I should note that if it was up to them, by now they would be through the entire set! I copy the design they are on, and they then work on it during our times of read aloud ~ and just like most of our resources, we go through spurts where we do them daily and then times where we don't (usually because we are in a hurry or because I have forgotten about this gem on my bookshelf). Each book contains twenty reproducible designs. The designs start simple (my Kindergarten daughter has recently begun the first designs in book one) and then gradually increase in their difficulty. Eventually (in book three) the kids are required to lift their pencil to skip over something on the page and then come back down and continue that same line (in book four they sometimes do that several times for each line). The kids simply connect dots 1 to 1, 2 to 2, 3 to 3, etc. and in book two they are required to connect all the numbers first and then dots A to A, and B to B, etc. The designs that are created by these straight lines (which for a child just getting used to making perfectly straight lines with a straight edge is not always easy) are really very amazing! The result end up with lots of "Wows!" After connecting all the dots, the child can check for accuracy by laying their paper over the completed design in the book or by visually comparing it to the small sample on the top right corner of their page. Once the design is complete, they get the joy of coloring it ~ sometimes my kids want to do 3-4 of the same design because it amazes them how different each can appear simply from their choices they have made with coloring it. The author claims that most of our teaching/learning experiences are oriented towards the development of the child's left brain, which primarily controls his language acquisition. The child's right brain is what controls his visual perception and memory and this line design series was created to promote the student's growth in this right brain hemisphere. I hope that this research is correct and these activites do indeed assist with visual perception, visual discrimination, memory skills and right-brain functioning. But, even if they don't ~ my family would still love these books simply because they are a lot of fun. I know for a fact that they have at least assisted each of my kids with the skill of drawing straight lines with a straight edge (which is a skill that is pretty useful) and with following directions. So, if you're looking for something fun to add to your school days for a nice change of pace or if you are desiring to find enjoyable activities to work on during the rainy days this spring and summer, "Creating Line Designs" just might be what you're looking for. I don't know of that many fun and educational resources you could find that spans the grades of K-9 (or higher in my opinion) for a low price of $22. Give it a try ~ you might find yourself enjoying it just as much as your kids!
