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Poetry Friday: Spring Triolet

Posted in Poetry Friday, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged Irene Latham, student poetry, triolet on March 18, 2022| 10 Comments »

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.

My drive to my schools changes with the seasons. In fall, the sugarcane is tall and takes my attention. In spring, these fields are fallow, and some become meadows of golden wildflowers. Horses roam. I wish I had taken a picture, but I’m usually on a strict time schedule.

Last week my student Chloe and I played with the triolet form, inspired by this Irene Latham poem, Triolet for Planting Day. It was a more challenging form than I thought it would be.

Triolet for Field and Breeze
When Field awakens to glimmering gold,
Breeze gallops upon green waves.
An ember mare nuzzles her foal
when Field awakens to glimmering gold,
and readies itself for a front of cold,
with frolics over winter’s graves.
When field awakens to glimmering gold,
Breeze gallops upon green waves.
Margaret Simon, draft

Spring Triolet
Spring colors over winter’s greed.
The rain fills all the holes.
Marshy areas buy blankets of reed.
And spring colors over winter’s greed.
Birds come home, now flight freed.
Out comes the little moles.
When spring covers winter’s greed,
The rain fills all the holes.
Chloe, 6th grade

The Progressive Poem Schedule is Complete. Click here to grab the schedule.

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Slice of Life #17: Thankful Thursday

Posted in Gratitude, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged full moon, wood duck house on March 17, 2022| 8 Comments »

Three Things I’m Thankful for This Thursday:

We have a wood duck house near the bayou in our backyard. This is the third year we have watched this amazing process. On the roof of the nesting box my husband built, he placed a Ring doorbell camera. It is activated by motion. He cleaned out the house and prepared for a new season in late January. It didn’t take long for a wood duck couple to find it and start laying eggs. Counting the number in this clutch (close to 20), it seems there may have been two hens laying the eggs. The hen started sitting on the eggs on March 1st. Every day I get multiple alerts “There is motion at your wood duck house.” She leaves twice a day to feed. She preens her feathers incessantly and turns the eggs. We are hopeful the recent freeze did not affect this clutch. They are due to hatch around March 28, so stay tuned.

One of my favorite things, a close second to seeing a rainbow, is a bright sun burst through a cloud. And with the bare branches of winter trees, this image fills me with hope.

Last night I attended church with a soup supper and good discussion. We prayed for Ukraine which feels like so little in such a horrible situation. When we were leaving, the full moon was high. I am grateful for my church family, for good food, and for peace in my community.

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This Photo Wants to be a Poem: Reflection

Posted in Photography, Poetry, Slice of Life, tagged #poemsofpresence, #smallpoems, Molly Hogan, This Photo Wants to be a Poem on March 16, 2022| 16 Comments »

Is it always the right time for reflection? The newness of the year has passed. In my spiritual life, it’s Lent which is a time of reflection. And the season is changing. But really, reflection should be an ongoing practice. Taking a look at what was in order to prepare for what is to come.

Reflection in a photograph is different. In a way this sort of reflection shows what is in a different light, new position. Molly Hogan is a writing partner, teacher, blogger who takes amazing photographs and offers them freely to this writing community. Take a minute to reflect and muse on this photo by Molly. Write whatever comes in the comments and leave encouraging comments for others.

You criss.
I cross,
and together,
we bridge.
Margaret Simon, draft

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Slice of Life: Grey is the New Blonde

Posted in Slice of Life, Writing, tagged Grey hair, The Isolation Journals on March 15, 2022| 22 Comments »

I don’t remember who introduced me to Suleika Jaouad’s Isolation Journals email. Each week a prompt from a well-known writer is featured. This week the prompt comes from Elizabeth Benedict:

Hair is elemental. It can define us, confine us, refine us, and when we’re faced with losing it, through age or illness, it can undo us.
Write about your relationship to your hair: how it shapes your own self-image. How others see you. Or how, when you lost your hair or changed it, you learned something—about yourself or someone else.
Elizabeth Benedict, Isolation Journal #186

I started letting my hair go grey a few years ago. I had gotten to a point where I could color my hair and within just a few short weeks, the white strands around my temple reappeared. All my life I have told myself I wanted white hair like my grandmother. But when it came time to stop fighting the change, I wasn’t sure how. I decided to go cold turkey and totally stop coloring my hair.

My hair is pretty much all grey and white now, but I don’t see it that way. To me, it still looks blonde in the mirror. I am shocked by photos of me that show such stark white.

People in general compliment my hair color. Who knew that so many like grey hair? Google grey hair and you get an article from Glamour titled “Oyster-Gray Hair is the Coolest New Color Trend.”

My stylist recommended a purple shampoo to use once a week. At Christmas a friend “complimented” the lavender in my hair. As if it was purple on purpose. Yikes! So I cut back on the purple shampoo.

I think most women have a love/hate relationship with their hair. I grow it out then cut it short. Go all one length, then layers. But most of all I am grateful for my hair. I finally look like my dear grandma, Nene.

What is your relationship with your hair?

Me with “Cat in the Hat”, our librarian.

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Slice of Life #14: Jamboard Quotes

Posted in Gifted Education, Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged Happiness, inspirational quotes, jamboard on March 14, 2022| 13 Comments »

I teach different groups of gifted kids, so I try to find ways to connect us. One of those is by blogging. Each week my students write a Slice of Life and comment on each other’s blog posts on Fanschool (formerly Kidblog).

Another collaborative project is our daily quote of the day. We often pull quotes from the 365 Days of Wonder, a companion to the book Wonder by R.J. Polacio. My first student of the day begins the Jamboard. We recently got the use of a Promethean, so she pulls it up on the board and taps out the words with the pen. Together we choose a background image. And throughout the day, each student adds a personal response to the quote. Their response also goes in their notebook as a creative notebook page they can decorate for themselves.

I love this little ritual for a few reasons. One, it gets us talking first thing, analyzing the quote, thinking about what it means, and sharing our responses. But I also love how my students are influenced by the positive message in the quote. They are just happier when we do this. And that makes me happy, too.

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Slice of Life #13: Leo’s World

Posted in Slice of Life, Writing, tagged being mamére, pretend play on March 13, 2022| 9 Comments »

In Leo’s world,
a dog leash becomes
a mountain climber’s harness.
A mallet for the xylophone: his pickaxe.
A peg board
full of colorful pegs
is a birthday cake for you.
He sings “Happy Birthday to Momma.”
She smiles then blows.
We are all players
in Leo’s world.

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Slice of Life #12: After Irene Latham

Posted in Gifted Education, Poetry, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged Artspeak, Irene Latham, student poems, teaching poetry on March 12, 2022| 6 Comments »

On Fridays with my 6th grade gifted kids, we unpack a poem. We discuss everything from form to figurative language, assign tone and theme, and write a poem in response. This is my favorite lesson of the week. The Promethean Board with the annotation tool makes it even better.

Yesterday we focused on Irene Latham’s spring poems. She posts a video each week designed for homeschoolers, but it works for me, too. This week we watched this video:

Using Irene’s Art Speak Padlet, we located the poems she highlighted and selected one to unpack. My first group chose “because every day is a symphony in spring.” So many things to see, imagery, personification, word choice, rhyme…

When yellow rings,
green cannot await
its return.
As white fades
in discord,
yellow rings.
Once again
as purple, pink
orange, and red
splash the fields.
Jaden, 6th grade

When green season
arrives,
the rainbow comes out
from every direction
and all around
you.
Red triangles grow with yellow spots
on green string,
orange sky falls
and the orange sky rises.
Yellow lights
shine through the heavy white marshmallows,
green spikes
poke out of the ground.
The sky’s blue
falling down in may,
with purple and pink petals
that have been waiting for
this season.
Green season,
green season,
full of delight
and color.
Katie, 6th grade

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Poetry Friday: Spark Art!

Posted in Poetry Friday, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged art collage, Linda Mitchell, Spark! on March 11, 2022| 16 Comments »

Poetry Friday is with Sylvia at Poetry for Children

I signed up to do an exchange for Spark Art #50 with my friend Inkling Linda Mitchell. Linda creates wonderful collages, so I asked her to do the exchange with me. She sent me a collage and I sent her a poem. She was charged with creating a collage from my poem and me with creating a poem from her collage. Fun, right? It is fun when you are playing with a friend you know will be respectful of your work and who does good work herself.

The links to our exchange on the Spark website are here and here.

I am sharing my poem process that responded to this collage.

The first thing I noticed was the moon. I wrote the title first, “Moonlight Sonata” and played Beethovan’s Sonata for inspiration. I noticed the foreign words. I asked Linda about the flowers, but she didn’t know what they were. I decided they were edelweiss. I got stuck, though, and decided to use a poem I had written for Laura Shovan’s February project and combine it with the work I was doing on responding to the collage. I don’t usually do this, and it created a level of mystery to the poem. And I’m OK with that.

Moonlight Sonata

Moon, wild orb nightly shining
high above the oak trees.
Your pull breaks waves
and concrete where oak roots
rise like bread, yeast pressing
our foreign earth.

How can you feel sadness
if you’ve not known joy?

When the edelweiss blooms,
we breathe in sweet scent,
welcome Spring
and sing praise for your goodness, Moon.

We push on and on
until, like you, the flower, the oak
we find our light
and shine.

There are only a few dates left for the Kidlit Progressive poem. Claim your day here.

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Slice of Life #10: Thankful Thursday

Posted in Slice of Life, Writing, tagged coffee, flowers, grandson Thomas, Thankful Thursday on March 10, 2022| 18 Comments »

Waking up this early Thursday I didn’t know what I should write. Daily slicing is a good discipline, but I am not as motivated this year as I remember being in the past. Who knows why. Thank goodness this is a community full of ideas for writing, so after reading Elisabeth’s post which was inspired by Hannah, I decided to do Three Things I’m Thankful for Thursday.

French Press Coffee: I needed a new coffee routine because my Keurig has been acting up, so I bought a French Press. Now I grind beans, heat water, pour over, press and create a fresh cup of coffee for my morning latté. Always frothed oak milk and a pottery mug!

2. Flowers on my morning walk: Azaleas are blooming. A sure sign of spring!

3. Sisters Text: Almost every day my three daughters and I exchange a text in a group. Last night we were talking about the upcoming wedding of my niece, their cousin. My youngest daughter was having dinner with my grandson, her nephew and sent this photo.

Martha wrote, “I’m on a date but he just called me Sophie so it’s not going well.”

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This Photo Wants to be a Poem: Clover

Posted in Slice of Life, Writing, tagged #poemsofpresence, #smallpoems, Clover, haiku, This Photo Wants to be a Poem on March 9, 2022| 32 Comments »

March is the season for clover. It’s popping up on lawns, in fields, everywhere. I love remembering my childhood in clover, sitting with friends and weaving long chains of clover flowers into crowns, necklaces, veils, anything a princess may need. Clover enhanced my play as a child growing up in Mississippi. I can still smell the freshly mown clover.

Kim Douillard wrote on her blog recently that a colleague of hers described haiku as “in one breath.” I love that thought and encourage you to try a breath of a haiku about clover, spring, childhood, whatever comes to mind. Leave a small poem in the comments and write encouraging responses to other writers.