Monday, April 2, 2012

Come play the alphabet!

Hi all,

It's been a bit quiet on this side after DanCon 2012.  I'm not slacking that's for sure, I've been busy working on a multitude of projects.

Can I take the time to say that I have a Kickstarter going for my new book, Heart.  I think you should all check it out, donate and pass it along!  I have a widget that I added to the right that show's the campaign's progress and sure do hope you click on over once you've read this post.

Ok, I am happy to announce the newest edition to the WIWL family:


That's right, WIWL is tackling the alphabet.  After I released a successful Coloring book, I wanted to keep helping kids learn in a fun way.  I thought about what else I could put a WIWL stamp on and I came up with an alphabet book.  I was going to call it The little Alphabet Book.  It was going to focus on little things, objects, animals, etc.  Even the letters were going to be kept at lowercase.  A book where they can flip through and learn their letters.  It was also going to be the first book that wasn't named like the other books.

I thought about it some more. After doing four books I wanted to keep going in that direction of having the kids interact with whatever I put out.  I wanted something fresh.  So I scratched the book idea and decided to do them as flashcards.  That way kids can learn the order of the alphabet too.  Parents can shuffle the cards around and ask them to put it in the correct order.  Now when I did research, I noticed that some of the alphabet sets were pretty random.  I like to have themes for my projects, like the coloring book was focused on sports, events, seasons, and holidays.

When I was thinking of the project as a book I noticed some of the little things I picked were toys and games.  I eventually decided on the idea of things you can play as the theme for these flashcards.  The only things I kept from  the initial idea were it was going to be lower case focused and the name was not going to precede the original title, When I Was Little.  The name Playing the Alphabet came much later...actually I think it was during one of Nicole and I's brainstorm conversations at the end of Dan Con last month.


So the way the cards are going to be shown are like this:



The front is designed with the letter and an image showing the letter being "played":


The back shows what it is, so k is for kazoo.  Here are some more samples of fronts, I tried to keep it a good mix of boys, girls, and everyone activities.



I had a lot of fun creating these and hope that the kids will have fun with the cards.  My plan is to have some sets available for the upcoming c2e2 show in Chicago.  The cards will be 5 1/2" x 7 1/2" and come in a clear case.


Hope to see you there!


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