The Toledo Museum of Art (TMA) and the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library have partnered together for ToddlerTime Tours, a multi-sensory experience designed to develop visual and textual literacy in children ages 18 to 36 months.  ToddlerTime, which will have its first tour in February, is the latest in the museum’s efforts to encourage visual literacy.  What is visual literacy?  The museum defines visual literacy as “the ability to derive meaning from images of everything that we see.”  It is the ability for someone to look at something — a piece of art, a sculpture, a billboard, or even the pictures that come across Facebook and Twitter– and understand what it is he or she is looking at.  The museum’s director, Brian Kennedy, has been a champion of visual literacy since joining TMA in 2010.  He has stated that visual literacy is the key sensory literacy and that it must be taught.  In the museum’s view, we live in a world that has, rather quickly, become “supersaturated” with images due to digital media and the Internet.   “The Lucas County Children’s Library had a very interesting workshop where they gave children picture books written in a foreign language, and they were asked to interpret the stories just from the pictures,” said Kathy Danko-McGhee, TMA’s Emma Leah Bippus director of education and head of visual literacy.  “The children were able to read the stories through the pictures.  It is important that children learn to read well, but visual literacy enhances textual literacy.  The same skills are used.”  ToddlerTime Tours is a free, monthly program in two parts that begins either at the Maumee Branch or Main Library and then resumes at the museum the following week.  At the library, toddlers and their parents will enjoy a librarian-led story hour themed around a work in the museum’s collection.  A week later at the museum, they will participate in a hand-on, docent-led tour that focuses on that work. Children will be given a bag of manipulatives, objects such as feathers, fabrics, color swatches and bells that match the work of art.  “The docent will ask questions like ‘Where is this color in the painting?’ or ‘What does this material feel like?’ The docent will also have a word list designed to broaden the children’s vocabulary and help their reading comprehension.  Before they leave, parents will be given a take-home activity so that their educational experience continues at home as a family,” said Danko-McGhee.  To encourage visual literacy from the earliest ages, TMA began hosting its free 30-minute Baby Tours on a monthly basis in 2012.  In this program, designed by Danko-McGhee, parents may bring their infants up to 18 months for a docent-guided tour of some of the museum’s most visually stimulating art where babies often respond by staring, smiling or reaching for the art.  Parents attending the Baby Tours are sent home with The Art of Seeing Art for Babies, a board book that presents some of the concepts found in the adult brochure at their most basic level.  For families with young children, TMA offers tote bags known as Gallery Gear which can be checked out for a hour and are filled with visual literacy resources and hands-on objects related to notable pieces of art in the collection.  In 2013, the museum released The Art of Seeing Art: A, B & See, a book that pairs letters of the alphabet with objects found in TMA artwork.  The book is available in the museum store and reference library.  Finally, as the center for visual literacy in Northwest Ohio, TMA is scheduled to host the 2014 International Visual Literacy Association Conference on Nov. 5-8.  Usually held at an institution of higher learning, this is the first year the conference will be held at a museum.  The event is open to professors, K-12 teachers, students and working artists.  Kevin Moore    http://www.toledofreepress.com/2014/01/30/toledo-museum-of-art-expands-visual-literacy-campaign-to-toddlers/

A foot in poetry usually contains one stressed syllable and at least one unstressed syllable. The standard types of feet in English poetry are the iamb, trochee, dactyl, anapest, spondee, and pyrrhic (two unstressed syllables).  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/glossary-terms?category=rhythm-and-meter

The types of line lengths in poetry are:

One foot:  Monometer

Two feet:  Dimeter

Three feet:  Trimeter

Four feet:  Tetrameter

Five feet:  Pentameter

Six feet:  Hexameter

Seven feet:  Heptameter

Eight feet:  Octameter  https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/570/03/

Meter in Poetry and Verse, A Study Guide by Michael J. Cummings

Meter is determined by the type of foot and the number of feet in a line.  Thus, a line with three iambic feet is known as iambic trimeter.  A line with six dactylic feet is known as dactylic hexameter.  Read much more at http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/xmeter.html

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe is made up of 18 stanzas of six lines each.  Generally, the meter is trochaic octameter – eight trochaic feet per line, each foot having one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable.  Poe based the structure of "The Raven" on the complicated rhyme and rhythm of Elizabeth Barrett's poem "Lady Geraldine's Courtship"  Read more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raven

The story of Super Bowl XLVIII, the Seattle Seahawks' 43-8 drubbing of Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos by Kevin Clark  A review of the game film shows that Manning's struggles were destined from the start.  Seattle's strategy focused on containing Denver's vaunted short passing game, exposing the Broncos as a team with surprisingly few tricks in their offensive bag.  The Seahawks gladly let Manning break the Super Bowl record for completions.  He connected on 34 of his 49 passes.  The hulking Seattle defense held those passes to an average of 8.2 yards per completion, the third-worst mark in Super Bowl history, according to Stats LLC.  The plan was simple:  Let Manning have his short passes, but make sure they stay short.  See analysis at http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304851104579361111580572276?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304851104579361111580572276.html

"The Lego Movie," opening February 7, 2014, is far more inventive and satirical than you might expect.  Made with a conscious resistance to the pitfall of toy-based movies, it's imbued with a childlike playfulness and a subversive mockery of corporate control.  The concept that co-writers and co-directors Phil Lord, 36, and Chris Miller, 38, came up with was to capture the experience of playing in a deep box of the interlocking plastic bricks.  In a world composed of Legos, following the rules, or the instructions, is a way of life. Workers happily sing the anthem "Everything Is Awesome," and are pacified by bland state-controlled entertainment, like the TV show "Where Are My Pants?"   Jake Coyle  http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Lego-Movie-built-to-be-a-better-toy-film-5202760.php

Charlie Chaplin's unpublished 1948 novella, "Footlights," served as the inspiration for his 1952 film, “Limelight.”  On Feb. 4, 2014, Cinetica di Bologna released the reconstructed manuscript.  This begins a series of events to celebrate 100 years since Chaplin first appeared on film.  http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/03/unpublished-chaplin-novella-to-be-released/

Issue 1106  February 5, 2014  On this date in 1919, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith launched United Artists.