Blog
The Public Library of me
I don’t really have a plan to monetize my books. I don’t like that the reading platforms don’t have something like the public library. The vast majority of the many thousands of books I have read were from the public library. The closest is KU and you still have to pay for it. So, I am trying pay-as-you-wish. I’m retired so I’m blessed to be able to experiment. I think the only way this would make any real money would be if a publishing house or production company wanted to produce a book or film. But I am committed to having my work available in the public library of me.
I have done this before. Almost 30 years ago I created the Little Bunny series a collection of preschool and kindergarten stories on Kindle and supported them with hundreds of free printables and read-alouds. Through Little Bunny’s long history, there have been profitable years, nibbles from publishing houses and agents, and busts with the pandemic and education changes. But Little Bunny lives on with hundreds of thousands of visits from around the world. And without almost no input from me, once in a blue moon, I’ll post in a FB group for teachers or homeschoolers. The word is simply out and people are excited to use the resource. I love that children are learning their 123s, abcs, and first reading skills from something I created. It makes me happy.
And that is the goal of posting the romcoms on my artist’s website and offering them for whatever people want to pay, or nothing at all. I’m thrilled that someone would want to read something I wrote and I hope the readers feel they found something meaningful to them. So……Help Yourself, Tell Everyone, Enjoy!!! www.diannemillerart.com/books
(The art publishing company that handled my art has sold, now I have to figure out what to do with all that…………Ugh.)
When Dianne Miller moved to a new town, the workmen loading the truck asked, “Are you a librarian?” There were so many books. As a little girl, she couldn’t wait for Saturday mornings at the library; she always walked out with books stacked up to her chin. Through the decades, she binged the classics, cozy mysteries, contemporary fiction, biographies and memoirs, and random works of non-fiction. Her favorite authors were women, Jane Austin, the Bronte sisters, Agatha Christie, Maya Angelou, Ann Tyler, Amy Tan, and so many more. When her daughters left the nest, she decided to write fun contemporary stories that support women and told of their journeys through this complicated and challenging world. You can find her work at www.diannemillerart.com/books.
Worksheet Wars: The struggle to find age appropriate printable activities.
Are printables the bane of childhood and a prop for lazy teachers, or a valuable asset in the toolbox of educators?
Just the word, worksheet, brings to mind tedious paperwork. I’m old enough to remember mimeographed dittos that reeked of mind-tingling ink the children eagerly sniffed as the teachers handed them out. Beyond these old tropes, I wanted to learn more about the development of a child’s mind and the appropriate introduction of printable activities into that progression.
Psychologists have been studying cognitive development in children for almost a century. And it is widely accepted by experts that by the age of 2 children can store images in their mind and recall them later: the ability to remember the fuzzy little ball that wiggles is a puppy. Shortly after, a child can understand the dual relationship between a representational object and the real thing: a snugly teddy bear is a representation of a real wild bear. This skill quickly evolves into the understanding of a symbol and what it represents: the letter B stands for the “bha” sound. This massive cognitive accomplishment takes place in the few short years between 3 and 6, paving the way for reading and other academic accomplishments.
During this important stage children learn quickly and effortlessly in engaging, interactive environments, actively using all their senses to experience the world. The goal is to stimulate the innately developing stages. The challenge is to find activities to encourage the child’s natural intellectual growth. A teacher once told me, “I can’t enrich my students with the same toys day after day, the point of enrichment is new experiences.”
On tight budgets and where some schools are situated with no outdoor space, an economic option can be freshly printed activities. Sorting and matching games stimulate the understanding of abstract concepts, like opposites and size, using representational images and the physical activity of moving the images around. Seek and finds reinforce shapes and symbols as forms of communication while searching the page. Story boards and puzzles develop the skill of assembling and problem-solving while physically constructing the finished product.
And of course, all these activities can be enhanced with creative, artistic, child-directed embellishment: bring on the sparkles and glue!
Appropriate printables are interactive, hands-on activities that encourage the understanding of symbols and anchors the symbols to concrete objects in a child’s world in an engaging, multi-sensory activity. Well designed printable activities enrich and stimulate the child’s cognitive development. There is a place for printables in early childhood education.
The critical component is finding the right printables that offer developmentally appropriate activities.
DIANNE MILLER IS THE AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR OF THE LITTLE BUNNY SERIES, A COLLECTION OF E-BOOKS SHE ORIGINALLY CREATED FOR HER OWN CHILDREN.
THE E-BOOKS ARE SUPPORTED BY HUNDREDS OF FREE PRESCHOOL PRINTABLES AND READ-ALOUDS. SHE ACTIVELY WORKS TO PUSH THE ENVELOPE AND CREATE PRINTABLES THAT MEET THE NEEDS OF CONTEMPORARY EDUCATORS AND PARENTS. HER ADULT DAUGHTER HAS WORKED IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION FOR 10 YEARS AND HELPED HER “INVENT” THE 3-IN-1 PRINTABLE, MAKING THE MOST USE OF THE PRINTED PAGE WITH DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPRIATE ACTIVITIES.
HER WORK CAN BE FOUND AT WWW.LITTLEBUNNYSERIES.COM