We Skyped With The Cantata Learning Songwriter & Artist Who Are The Winter Inspiration For Our Project

The Winter Around The World project is underway with my Iowa friends at Van Meter Elementary, Amana Elementary and Titan Hill Elementary.  

The teacher librarians, classroom teachers, music and art teachers involved thought it would be awesome to learn with the songwriter and illustrator of the Cantata Learning book that is giving us our inspiration for this project.  

So I reached out and brought them to these three schools for a little Skype visit today. 

Lisa Bell, author and songwriter, and Emily Brooks, illustrator, created Winter...The Coldest Season Of All with Cantata Learning.

The young learners in these three schools have been reading and singing this book as they learn, create, share and collaborate throughout the winter project.

We loved kicking off with the Van Meter 2nd graders signing to all of us. 

It was very exciting for all of us to Skype with the ones behind the book.  Kat Coughlan, product development for Cantata Learning, was also part of our fun.  

Lisa told us how her son inspired her to write Winter...The Coldest Season of All.  She also reminded the students to keep on writing, singing and having fun with the process.

We loved seeing how Emily created the illustrations by drawing on paper first.

She then uploads them into Photoshop and layers the drawings to create the beautiful illustrations in Winter...The Coldest Season of All.   

The students in Amana and Van Meter are using eduBuncee to create their winter stories.  The process that Emily uses is very similar to how the children are creating their stories and illustrations.

They are drawing them by hand on paper, uploading them into eduBuncee, and adding interactive stickers and animations to make their winter stories come to life.

 We had such a great time in Van Meter, especially because our friends in....

Council Bluffs and Amana, Iowa were part of our Skype too.

Thank you new friends.  We cannot wait to share our winter stories, songs and illustrations with all of you in December. 

And thank you Lisa, Emily and Kat.  You gave the students lots of ideas as they set off to write and illustrate their winter stories and songs too.   We can't wait to share our global winter eBook with you too.  

On November 23, we are Skyping with Mark Oblinger who arranged and produced the book.  This will be another amazing experience for all of us as the students bring their work together to create and publish their very own global winter story.