We’re having a bit of a crisis in the art glass industry. Bullseye Glass has had to suspend most of their production due to a cease and desist order by the governor of the state of Portland regarding the usage of heavy minerals in their production. Uroboros has also suspended some of their production. They are both in Portland, OR. Part of the fallout of this is that Spectrum Glass, based in Washington State will be ending production and going out of business later this year. Uroboros produces a lot of glass for Spectrum. They have been manufacturing art glass for decades but now the local government is up in arms regarding soil, and air tests around the areas of their factories. Bullseye has been very active in equipping their factory with the necessary filters that will be required. You can check out the players in this nightmare us glass artists are witnessing by going to Bullseye’s web site as well as Uroboros and Spectrum. Also, this link can lead you to what you can do to let the government know that you stand by the art glass industry. The trickle down effect on this will be catastrophic if we don’t all band together in support of the affected companies. Thank you.
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Fall-Themed Literacy Activities
I had some fall literacy activities in my leaf reading and writing activities post, but I wanted to include a few more with a more general fall theme if you’re into that. See also my roundup of printable fall books for kids for some easy reading and coloring activities.
KidSparkz has a great collection of free fall printables for literacy, math and more. Of particular interest to us right now are the printable alphabet flashcards and number cards, which could be used to decorate a bulletin board, spell out kids’ names or for other activities.
Speaking of alphabets, you can also get a full alphabet (upper and lower case) on apples, apples with objects that start with each letter for matching, and lots of other fun apple themed early literacy activities from Make Take Teach. Learn about how to use them at that link, and purchase the set from Teachers Pay Teachers.
Play with rhyming words with a fall theme with the printable rhyming acorns activity from Mrs. Jones’ Creation Station. Each half of an acorn shows a picture and they pair up with another picture of something that rhymes, like jet and net, pig and wig.
Help kids learn their letters with this adorable feed the scarecrow activity from ABCs of Literacy. The printable (free when you enter your email) includes the scarecrow face and upper case and lowercase letters on straw shapes. Just add the face to a paper bag and you can practice letter recognition by saying a letter and having the child feed the right one to the scarecrow (or use it for the first or last letter in a word for an extra challenge).
The fall find it writing center from The Kindergarten Connection is a great one to use in the classroom. You hide images of different fall things around the room, and kids color them in as they find them. The hidden images include the word written out, and kids can read it out loud when they find each item.
Kids can practice their handwriting skills with these fall handwriting pages from The Natural Homeschool. Each word has a picture and the words are written on the lines beside the picture so kids can trace them or write the words on the lines below.
If you need even more little printable books for kids to read, check out I See Fall from Fun-a-Day. This fun little book includes different things kids might see in the fall, like leaves, apples, pumpkins, sunflowers, acorns and scarecrows. Kids can color the objects and, in one version, they can write in the word see in each sentence.