Welcome to the The Imagination Generation Activity Zine! You can download the zine for free via the button below.

Kids today, born after 2012, are officially labeled “Generation Alpha.” But I like to also celebrate them as The Imagination Generation.

Every human being is born with a limitless imagination. However, today’s kids — newborn to age nine — have more tools and pathways for exploring, cultivating, and wholly realizing their imaginational potential — inside their still-developing brains — than any other generation before them. This moment in time is their jackpot-winning lottery ticket.

The twelve activity pages inside The Imagination Generation Activity Zine are fun, creative, and inspiring tools that you can use with the child or children in your life — at home, in the classroom or library, for programs throughout the community, and more. These activities are meant to help spark, explore, process, and develop the imagination, creativity, curiosity, feelings, connection, participation, and what makes each of us unique and different. They can be used solo, collectively, and/or as supplemental materials.

I believe it’s always important for us adults to remember: We are the superheroes today that The Imagination Generation is relying on to help raise them into the superheroes who will create tomorrow!

And, most importantly, have fun right alongside them!                

John

P.S. The Imagination Generation Activity Zine was created as a companion to my “Raising Up The Imagination Generation” essay, which you can read by clicking HERE.

Other Additional Free Downloads:

The Star Jumped Over the Moon Discussion & Activity Guide for Parents, Teachers, Librarians, & Others

The Star Jumped Over the Moon Activity Zine

The post The Imagination Generation Activity Zine first appeared on John Schlimm.

Welcome to The Star Jumped Over the Moon Activity Zine! You can download the zine for free via the button below.

“What is a zine?” You may wonder. Short for magazine or fanzine, a zine is a small circulation collection of images, text, and other artwork that traditionally is handmade and reproduced via photocopier by one person or group around one theme or cause, such as embracing what makes you different and unique, exploring creativity and self-expression, and discovering your potential to leap to great heights in this world!

The Star Jumped Over the Moon Activity Zine is geared toward children ages seven and younger, and can be used solo or as a companion activity guide to my picture book The Star Jumped Over the Moon. Likewise, the pages inside the zine can be completed individually—using crayons, colored pencils, collage, and any other tools, materials, and methods you wish—or as a group and then compiled in various ways to produce original zines for each creator.

The Star Jumped Over the Moon picture book, published by Familius, is a story about discovering and embracing what makes each of us unique individuals. It’s the story of friendship, self-exploration, living and letting go, transformation, and ultimately using our talents and everything else that make us different to navigate the joys and challenges of life, while propelling ourselves toward our dreams and best days ahead. Each reader soon discovers that, indeed, YOU are the star that jumped over the moon!

Have Fun Creating! +++++

John

Other Additional Free Downloads:

The Star Jumped Over the Moon Discussion & Activity Guide for Parents, Teachers, Librarians, & Others

The Imagination Generation Activity Zine

The post The Star Jumped Over the Moon Activity Zine first appeared on John Schlimm.

The misunderstanding of a mental, physical, or other trait, issue, life choice, or way of living that is viewed and labeled in a negative, cruel, and destructive way.

Hello, You!

Welcome to the YOU SMASH STIGMAS! zine, which also includes a Discussion & Activity Guide. You can download the zine for free via the button below.

A big part of our mental health initiative and overall mission at The Kindness Rocks & Smiles Community Project is to break down stigmas of all kinds. We do this by encouraging people of all ages—starting with YOU—to love their brains, to embrace the traits and gifts that make them unique individuals, and to better understand their own extraordinary life journeys—the joys and the challenges—and those of others.

On your own or within a group, we invite you to use the YOU SMASH STIGMAS! zine—both the images throughout this zine and the discussion questions and activities at the end—to explore what stigmas mean to you and what role you can play in smashing through them, for yourself and others.

Together, we can make a positive impact in each of our own lives and the lives of others by recognizing stigmas, understanding how destructive they are, and then putting them where they belong

ENJOY YOUR JOURNEY!

~ Megan + John

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Welcome to the FIND THE KIND! Zine. You can download this zine for free via the button below.

Created as part of the My Kind Zine Series for The Kindness Rocks & Smiles Community Project, the images and activities throughout this zine will inspire you to look closer and more mindfully at all the places in your life and in the world around you where kindness exists, both in the happiest of times and in the more challenging moments.

The post FIND THE KIND! Zine first appeared on John Schlimm.

Welcome to The Creative Kindness Zine! You can download the zine for free via the button below.

At The Kindness Rocks & Smiles Community Project, we see kindness, smiles, and life itself in infinitely different, brilliant shapes and colors of all kinds and comprised of many different elements, all beginning with each one of us.

And, we believe that kindness is, indeed, a participatory and interactive art form for which each one of us is an unique artist and participant.

Because of the multimedia approach we have taken with everything we are doing at The Kindness Rocks & Smiles Community Project, we are so excited to share our My Kind Zine Series and The Creative Kindness Zine with you.

Most importantly, as you journey through these pages, we hope that you will be inspired to embrace your own self-expression, reflection, and creativity, and have fun!

And please be sure to check-out our Creative Kindness Zine Workbook.

ENJOY!

Megan + John

The post The Creative Kindness Zine first appeared on John Schlimm.

High School Art Students to Honor “Five Years in Heaven”

Star & Celebrated Artist Sister Augustine

with “The Gussie Tribute Collection”

Opening Event and Sale at ECCOTA Gallery on April 1

[See selected pieces from “The Gussie Tribute Collection” at the bottom.]

On Friday, April 1, from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m., the Elk County Council on the Arts Gallery (237 Main Street, Ridgway, PA) will host the opening event and sale for “The Gussie Tribute Collection,” a limited edition of abstract ceramic bowls inspired by the late Sister Augustine and created by art students at Ridgway Area High School under the direction of teacher Rich Skellen and guest-curated by John Schlimm. The event is free and open to the public. Each of the bowls will be available for $12.00, accompanied by a special tag of provenance, and will also include a complimentary ticket to the ECCOTA “Feed the Arts Soup Benefit” (April 7). All proceeds from the sale of the bowls will benefit the ongoing efforts at ECCOTA.

In January, Skellen began working with his art students to study Sister Augustine’s most famous series, her nearly 500 abstract “Gussie’s Special” bowls and vases, which she created using mostly leftover paint in her ceramics studio at St. Joseph Monastery during the last five years of her life, from ages 87 to 92. Working in both their in-school art studio and at Brockway Center for Arts & Technology, the students were challenged to create their own inspired versions and interpretations of Sister Augustine’s “Gussie’s Specials” for “The Gussie Tribute Collection.”

“Ridgway Area High School is excited to be a partner in celebrating Sister Augustine’s life and career as an Elk County artist who had her heart in the Arts for almost forty-five years,” Skellen said. “The students have enjoyed crafting bowls inspired by Sister’s signature Gussie’s Special ceramics. The Gussie Tribute Collection project has been a wonderful learning opportunity for the students to merge Elk County culture with the importance of ceramics as a technology we often take for granted.”

Sister Augustine and her “Gussie’s Specials” have recently gained national and international attention with of the release of Schlimm’s best-selling memoir, “Five Years in Heaven: The Unlikely Friendship That Answered Life’s Greatest Questions,” which inspired a global social media movement that has reached nearly five million people worldwide. And earlier this year, ECCOTA honored Sister Augustine posthumously with its “Lifetime Achievement Award.”

“Sister Augustine would be so thrilled to see students carrying on the spirit of her work in this special way,” Schlimm said. “For the many people who never had the chance to get a Gussie’s Special or for those would like to now add something uniquely spectacular to their Sister Augustine collection, these incredible students have created small masterpieces that will be treasured for generations to come just like the original Gussie’s Specials.”

“The Gussie Tribute Collection” event comes on the heels of last fall’s “Unfinished Works Collection by Sister Augustine” where 200 clayware works left unfinished by Sister Augustine in her studio at the time of her passing sold out in 20 minutes.

For nearly 45 years, from 1964 to 2008, Sister Augustine transformed simple clayware into unique pieces of artwork. From her humble four-room studio and shop that she started on the grounds of St. Joseph Monastery—the oldest Benedictine convent in the United States, this self-taught artist quietly worked, full-time and over-time, 6 days a week. Even when she was 92 years old.

During her lifetime, Sister Augustine created a prolific body of work, which has been collected by people throughout the country and around the world. There is at least one of her Nativity sets in all 50 states, as well as in Japan, England, and Germany. Her other clayware pieces have travelled as far away as Central America, Africa, and even Russia.

Schlimm added, “Sister Augustine’s life and the work she has left behind speak to the very nature and spirit of art itself. Reflected in her brushstrokes, we find not only the story of the artist herself, but glimpses of the gifts, talents, and potential within ourselves. Now her story marches on through the heart and talent these art students have put into sharing The Gussie Tribute Collection with us.”

For more information about “The Gussie Tribute Collection” event, please contact the ECCOTA Gallery at 814-772-7051.

Selected Pieces from “The Gussie Tribute Collection”

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Final Works of Celebrated Artist Sister Augustine

To Be Made Available To The Public

At a special event on Wednesday, November 18, from 6 to 8 p.m., the Benedictine Gift Shop (139 Church Street) in St. Marys, PA, will release the limited edition, signed and numbered Unfinished Works Collection by the late Sister Augustine, the 92-year old celebrated artist and star of the best-selling memoir Five Years in Heaven: The Unlikely Friendship That Answered Life’s Greatest Questions by John Schlimm. The event and sale are open to the public. Phone-in orders will also be taken nationwide following the event, starting on November 19.

The Unfinished Works Collection consists of 82 white bisqueware ceramic art pieces signed by Sister Augustine with her trademark “SJC” for Saint Joseph’s Ceramics, which was part of St. Joseph Monastery, the oldest Benedictine Convent in the U.S founded in 1852 (The convent closed in 2015). These works were left unfinished by Sister Augustine in her studio upon her passing in 2008.

The pieces represent Sister’s motto that: “Life is meant to be an unfinished piece of work that others carry on in some way after you’ve gone. That way there truly is no beginning and no end.”

In honor of Sister Augustine’s inspiring humility and belief that her works should be affordable to anyone who wants to own one, these specially blessed pieces will be priced $10.00 and under, and accompanied with a special tag of provenance. At the event, there will be a limit of two pieces per person. Proceeds will benefit the ongoing work and ministry of the Benedictine Gift Shop.

For more information about The Unfinished Works Collection event on November 18, or to place an out-of-town order for an unfinished piece (starting on November 19) or a specially inscribed copy of Five Years in Heaven, please call the Benedictine Gift Shop c/o St. Mary’s Parish at 814-781-1019.

Select Pieces From

The Unfinished Works Collection

By Sister Augustine

The post “The Unfinished Works Collection” By Sister Augustine first appeared on John Schlimm.

There have even been special and very touching requests, such as the grandma from Iowa who asked me to draw a hummingbird in the book for her daughter whose 8-year-old son passed away from cancer. And a black and blue butterfly inscription that fondly reminds a woman of her late husband.

Below is a sampling of the inscriptions so far.

To order a copy of FIVE YEARS IN HEAVEN with a hand-drawn inscription, please call the Benedictine Gift Shop in St. Marys, PA, at 814-781-1019. They will ship anywhere in the U.S.

If you already have FIVE YEARS IN HEAVEN and would like me to inscribe it, or you would like a signed bookplate for it, please send the book or request to me (with a S.A.S.E.) at: John Schlimm, 479 Brusselles Street, St. Marys, PA 15857.

ENJOY!

The post “Five Years in Heaven” Has Become a Fun & Inspiring New Canvas For Me… first appeared on John Schlimm.