School-Age: Printing Press

Our topic this week was the printing press (and the history of the written word)!

1. Reading
The book we read was "I Am a Story" by Dan Yaccarino. Judy Freeman shared the book at her workshop this Spring and I LOVED it. I didn't get into costume like she did while reading it but, even so, the book packs a powerful punch. 

There is only a sentence or two per page but, combined with the images, it is a perfect book to use to discuss the origins of the written word. 

2. Discussion
I created a simplified timeline of the printing press. I defined the printing press as the transfer of an image via ink using pressure. I went through a history of different forms of print, relating it to images we had seen in "I Am a Story". 

We talked about cuneiform, hieroglyphics, wood-block printing and movable type, Gutenberg's printing press, etching, wood engravings, lithography, and Braille. Then we talked about printing and computers in the modern age, such as inkjet printing and having personal computers at home and even in our pockets. 

I made the discussion go full circle when I made the connection that cuneiform was on clay tablets and NOW we have tablets we read from!

3. Craft
We made our own wood block stamps to model after the movable type. We purchased 1 inch wooden blocks from Amazon. They come in bags of 100 blocks so we had plenty for the kids to make several each.

We had foam with the peel-off sticky backs in our craft supplies that we pulled out to use at the program.

These are some we, and our teen helpers, made:

4. Activity
After they finished adding pieces of foam to their blocks, we put out stamp pads and let the kids practice using their wood blocks to stamp card stock.

Notes:

I was very excited about the wood-block stamp craft and it went really well. The only downside is that the ink gets all over the kids hands after a couple stamps. Because of this, we had sani-hands to hand out to them after they were done with the program.