January 8 - Buckminster Fuller

-
I just finished Buckminster Fullers Universe: His Life and Work.   Here is my brief review from Goodreads.




A stunning portrait of on of the most incredible human minds of all time.  Buckminster Fuller is a fascinating thinker, and the author of this book does a great job of breaking down his difficult to following thinking out loud style of communication.  For Educators, it will inspire you to create a challenging atmosphere that brings out the best of your childrens creative mind.  Many of Buckys ideas are easily translated to great classroom activities.

A must read for anybody interested in the power of human potential and the future of our small planet.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Shape of a Unit.

-
Image
Each unit is different. Each unit has a different shape. 
Some of them are straight linear lines, start at point A, pass point B, end at Point C. 
Some of them are more root-like, branching off into many different directions.
Read more

Picture Books for Inquiry

-
Image
Kath Murdoch posted a great list of picture books for inquiry on her blog. Some of those books are my favorites, others I need to buy. As an avid book collector, I need to expand this list. Books are meant for sharing! I spend some time with my books and chose the best ones for sparking inquiry...

(apologies to all you picture book collectors out there, this is going to hurt your wallet)

TSUNAMI! by Kimiko Kajikawa (story about sacrifice and bravery)
Art&Max by David Wiesner (fun story about what it means to be paint)
The Librarian who measured the Earth by Kathryn Lasky (what it means to be an inquirer)
The Arrival by Shaun Tan (visual storytelling at its best)
D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths (or Norse Myths, ancient mythology told in easy to follow kid friendly language with beautiful art)
How I Learned Geography by Avi Shulevitz (the power of imagination)
Henry Climbs a Mountain by DB Johnson (a book about civil disobedience and Thoreau)
Arrow to the Sun by Gerald McDermot (j…
Read more

Flotsam and exploring imaginative questions through literacy

-
Image
My favorite picture book is Flotsam by David Wiesner.





It is a wordless picture book about a boy who finds a camera on the beach.  He develops the pictures inside and discovers new worlds beyond his imagination.  Every class I have ever shown it to has loved it.  It leads to wonderfully imaginative discussions and so many questions.  The other day we were working on asking imaginative questions and I used this book as a starting point for a writing activity.

As I went through the book and the kids read it (or looked at it, but experienced it is probably the better description) I had them writing down every question that came to their head.  At the end of the book, we had about a hundred questions so we began sharing them and discussing what questions would lead to new and interesting stories, and why.  What about those questions were richer than the other questions?  We concluded that the really rich questions led us to a background story that we didn't have, or that the book did not…
Read more