I’m not a fan of trends; I never have been. Always, it seems, I’m outside the box with trends such as colors, styles, books, or hobbies well before or after it is popular with the general public. My deep teal green kitchen was painted 5-7 years before everyone had teal on their walls. Once the…
Today, I was going to write about crafting. The topic was inspired by my own increase in crafting this year – fabric face mask, a quilt, more jewelry (which I’ve done since 2008), and of course, crafting with words – poems, essays, prose, etc. My husband has also increased his crafting, making custom furniture and…
Yesterday, I heard a radio announcer tell about some famous person who left a 1,000 tip for a waitress at a restaurant where he had just eaten a meal. Wow! Great, right?! Yes and no. While it’s great that he completed this generous and seemingly random act, it should have stopped there. Instead, he took…
Who did I work with when I managed school gardens and taught after school garden clubs consisting of second through fifth grade students? Did I work alone? No, absolutely not! There was a team of people essential to making the garden clubs work. My post today was inspired by this photo (see below) from 2014…
Today is Poetry Friday and my post was inspired by the colorful blue and white page of photographs adorning our home calendar this month. Each year I make calendars for our immediate family. They are filled with the special moments that occurred the year or sometimes, just the month, before I work on them, as…
What have I worked on this week? I am a reflective thinker. Perhaps, too much so. I find that sometimes all my thinking stalls my actions and prevents forward movement. I get caught up in questions such as, what should I do now? What would be most productive? Should I stop editing and put those…
Several years ago, when I had writer’s circle, the students tried their hand at writing the several types of poems during our month long unit which ran from mid-February to mid-March. My favorites were the color poems and the haiku. I found poetry, using the forms below, helped the young student (third grade) to learn…
Typically, November is not a favorite month. However, after a cool and mostly gray October, we’ve had a series of very beautiful days here in the upper mid-west. The sky has been clear and cloudless. The temperature has hovered around 70 degrees. It’s has felt so good to shed some of the layers that we…
Today, on Poetry Friday, I want to celebrate the poet Jack Prelutsky. I own several of his holiday poem books, gifted to me by my mom who used them for years in her third grade classroom. Subsequently, I used them for years for my third grade writer’s circle. Jack Jack Prelutsky is an American born…