winter poem swap | Reflections on the Teche

Posts Tagged ‘winter poem swap’

Poetry Friday: Little Gingerbread Houses

Posted in Gratitude, Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged ee cummings, Karen Eastlund, The Slowdown, winter poem swap on December 17, 2021| 11 Comments »

Little Gingerbread House
The whole room smells
of graham crackers and icing,
sweet-scented as Christmas should be,
marked by twinkle lights and fingers
dipped in icing or glitter glue.
Santa’s in the hallway
listening to every child’s wish.
Teachers are tired, overwhelmed
by lists and sugary treats. Too much
time spent on planning, cooking, decorating.
But there’s the child with bright eyes
who opens her arms and says “I love you”.
You must open
your little gingerbread house
to all of it.
Margaret Simon, draft

I started my day listening to Ada Limón and The Slowdown. She talked about her grandmother’s kitchen and read the poem little tree by ee cummings. I played this episode for my students, and we wrote together. My poem above is true. I took the plunge and did gingerbread houses made out of graham crackers for the first (and most likely last) time. The success on Avalyn’s face and her insistence on telling me she loved me comforted my weary soul. She wrote a sweet story about her little gingerbread house on Fanschool here. (Spoiler alert: it includes a true story about a lizard rescue.)

Chloe wrote a poem side-by-side to ee cummings.

(after ee cummings little tree)
bright star
bright little North Star
you are so bright
you are more like a light
who found you behind Mars
and were you sad to lose hide and seek?
see I will comfort you
because you light up my Christmas tree.
i will hug your prickly sides
and swing you gently
as your mother would
so don’t run away
and my father and i will lift you up
and look at your shining stem
we’ll skip and sing
“Behold that Star”
Chloe Willis, 6th grade

This is the time of year for the Winter Poetry Swap. I exchanged with Karen Eastlund. She sent me the following poem (how cool that it’s in the shape of a Christmas tree) along with some delicious goodies and a hand sewn mini bin. Thanks, Karen.

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Poetry Friday: Nestlings

Posted in Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged nestlings, Sunday Poetry Swaggers, winter poem swap on January 8, 2021| 21 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is with Sylvia at Poetry for Children.
She highlights poetry books coming in 2021.

The Sunday Night Swaggers have entered this new year with a challenge from Heidi Mordhorst. We’ve all read and admired the new poetry collection from Irene Latham, This Poem is a Nest. I reviewed her book on this post.

Irene created the term nestling, which is similar to a found poem. She started with her own poem and found new poems within it. I decided to start with a poem I wrote for Heidi for the Winter Poem Swap.

Essence of Heidi

There you are rolling Play-doh balls,
placing them onto a fake birthday cake,
lighting each candle
deep breath in, then screen-blow–
a ritual of celebration, exclamation
of You Matter!

There you are creating a caterpillar’s undoing,
how it digests itself
to become something miraculous,
shouting the great wonder–
a ritual of changing, shedding the old,
in silence.

There you are writing words,
passion-pulsed onto the page
to inspire a child or grown-up–
a ritual of reading aloud, praise
for turn-the-page, frosted ice
melting into a poem.

–Margaret Simon, 2020 Winter poem swap

Here are my nestlings…

Happy Birthday! Play-Doh cake in celebration of You!	Writing Teacher Words inspire-up praise.	Picture Book Lighting a miraculous child, then turn-the-page
Autumn Undoing– become shedding silence	Peek-a-Boo There, There, there you are.	Irene’s Nest Ritual of passion pulsed the page into poem

Nestling drafts, Margaret Simon

Poetry Friday: Winter Swap

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Spiritual Growth, Writing, tagged Golden Shovel, Naomi Shihab Nye, Tricia Stohr-Hunt, winter poem swap on December 13, 2019| 13 Comments »

A gathering of poetry can be found at Liz Steinglass’s site.

The Winter Poetry Swap has arrived. Our friend Tabatha Yeatts matches us up for a rich exchange of poetry inspired gifts. This year I was paired with Tricia Stohr-Hunt. This week I received her gift.

Tricia spent some time on my gift. That impresses me because these days, especially in December, time is precious and small. She cross-stitched my favorite line of poetry from Naomi Shihab Nye. Now to know this, she had to read my blog posts. Then design and stitch.

And to top it all off, she wrote a wonderful golden shovel using the line.

Golden Shovel for Advent
It is not the season of me or I.
nor the season of greed and want.
It is time for reflection, time to
prepare for the guest. We must be
ready to reach out to someone,
anyone who needs, anyone who
asks. Let us draw nearer to what makes
us whole. As the year crowns, it is music
that fills the air and our hearts with
expectation. Stars keep watch. My,
how they shine! Rejoice, for the Lord is coming.
Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2019

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Poetry Friday: Word Wandering

Posted in Poetry Friday, tagged Linda Mitchell, Matt Forrest Esenwine, Nikki Grimes, Tabatha Yeatts, winter poem swap, wordplay poem on December 14, 2018| 11 Comments »

Poetry Friday round-up is with Laura Shovan.

One of the best parts of this Poetry Friday community is the Winter poem swap managed by Tabatha Yeats. My recipient this year was Matt Forrest Esenwine. He posted my gift and poem on his site today along with a virtual Christmas party.

I received a handmade journal and a poem from Linda Mitchell. She is in my writing group. How serendipitous! She explained that she had gathered words and phrases from one of our Zoom meetings and weaved them together into this amazing reverso poem. She also hand made the little snowman from cutting paper from an old discarded picture book.

With my students this week, we explored word wandering. I remembered first seeing this idea on Today’s Little Ditty when Michelle featured Nikki Grimes. Some great examples are included in the Best of Today’s Little Ditty, 2014-2105. Breighlynn wandered with the word bell.

Bell

by Breighlynn

Bell is a shiny word,
the music in my ears
Ding! Ding!
The bell rings for school
for lunch
even playtime
Bells help us learn
just like music.

I played around with a few words in my notebook, and each one seemed to lead me to babies. (Wonder why?)

Small is a tiny word
rolling on the page
where nothing is too small
to be noticed.

Small is my baby boy.
His lips circle and stretch
as he tastes the world.

Whenever you feel small,
think of this tiny miracle
and you will know
the truth
of pure love.

(draft) Margaret Simon

Grandbaby Leo with the blanket I made for him.

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The Season for Giving

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Slice of Life, tagged #haikuforhealing, Matt Forest Esenwine, Today's Little Ditty, winter poem swap on December 20, 2016| 12 Comments »

Join the Two Writing Teachers blog for the Slice of Life Challenge.

Click to purchase on Amazon

If you haven’t already heard about this wonderful little book of poems, I am here to offer another shameless promotion. I was one of the readers who selected poems to be included; I have 2 poems included; and I wrote a blurb for the back cover. Michelle Heidenrich Barnes is a person I know I love even though I’ve never met her face to face. She is incredibly generous. Each month she features a wonderful poet and asks us out in the Poetry Friday cyberspace to write ditties. When we do, we understand that the fame is short lived on a blog post gallery at the end of the month. However, now we have an anthology! So many great challenges from cinquain to zeno, from haiku and beyond. This collection is a must for any classroom poetry library.

Also in this sphere of poets, I’ve virtually met Tabatha Yeatts who mixes us up and organizes a Winter Poem Swap. This week I received my poem gift from Matt Forest Esenwine. Matt managed to find time to read my Christmas blog posts and create a found poem from them. He printed his poem on one of my Christmas tree images. So thoughtful. So meaningful. So special. Thanks, Matt.

We are in our last few days before winter break. I invited our art teacher to lead the students in an activity during their party on Monday. She taught them about shading in a snowman image. It’s funny when we talk about snowmen because few of my students have ever seen snow, much less made a snowman. But all kids love drawing them. We ended up with a rainbow of snowmen, grey, blue, teal, and even purple.