My husband and I have taken to sitting for half an hour in the room off of our kitchen in the morning while I have my tea. We catch up on news, share opinions, and sometimes outline the plan for the day. Today, we briefly touched on the depressing nature of the news and social…
White. White is a marshmallow, All soft and chewy. White is a cloud, All wispy and bright. White is the color of a blinding snowfall at night, when you trip over your snowman who gives you a fright. I see visions of ghosts at Halloween, and skeletons, too, with a brilliantly…
This morning I started a post about old posts. I worked on it for a while and then decided to do something else – something on my “to do” list. I finished a draft of a biography I need for an upcoming presentation in June. I was not happy with it. Writing a biography or…
Three years ago while my third-grade writer’s circle was still functioning, the students were provided a lesson on superstitions. Are you superstitious? I have definitely become less superstitious as I’ve aged which is a common finding according to the transcript from The Numbers Game National Geographic (2014). Superstitions are part of what is known as…
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while now, you might remember that I led a third-grade writer’s circle for six years. Weekly, during those six years, I’d return to the elementary school where my boys attended and work with six students, two from each third-grade classroom, on creative writing. Over those years, we…
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about water. This life-giving fluid is our most precious resource. I fear for the future as we pollute, divert, steal, and abuse the water we have available to use on earth. Did you know that less than 1% of the water on earth is available for human consumption? It’s…
Exploring Haiku Poems when I taught Writer’s Circle was one of my favorite activities. Some of the Haiku I offer today (the first and last) are examples from those lessons, as I would write alongside my students. The others are those Haiku that were inspired today by my previous writing. Although Haiku is meant to…
Since my work a week ago when I conducted a mini-lesson on writing Haiku at Wetland Education Days, I have been thinking a lot about writing. One of the most common questions I received from the students was whether their haiku needed to rhyme. Of course not, was my response! Flow trumps rhyme in poetry…
A Child’s Memory I don’t know about you, but I love all this stuff about space. There’s been many stories in the news lately due the the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. I was five. I remember being glued to the television set to watch something that seemed so incredible it was…
Some years ago, about four – I think, I had my writer’s circle students write a compilation of alphabet poems. There were six students in my group, each getting four letters on which to write a short, descriptive poem about what the letter brings to mind for each of them. I gave my usual, stay…