Do you speak in images? Enjoy taking photos to document your experiences or just to express what you notice in the world? Love to share them with others? Welcome to the weekly photo challenge! I post a new challenge each week…check in regularly and join the fun!

As teachers know, the week leading up to winter break is a busy one.  There’s so much more to teaching than reading and writing and math!  Kids heads are filled with the wonder and all the iconic imagery of the holidays, and we have to work hard to make learning relevant and engaging during this week.  And while there was plenty conspiring against us, there was a lot of great learning to celebrate.  Early in the week, kids put finishing touches on gifts they had made for their family and wrapped them up to take home.  I can’t give away what’s inside…there’s still a few days until Christmas!  There’s a lot of learning contained in these festive packages…from the creation to the presentation, each step is a learning opportunity that we, as adults, often take for granted!

We were also surprised this week with a package from author/illustrator Lizi Boyd.  After reading Flashlight earlier this school year, our students had created Flashlight-inspired art and wrote stories based on Lizi Boyd’s wordless picture book.  When my teaching partner emailed her to share how much we loved her work…and sent some of our student products to her, she responded enthusiastically and sent our students beautiful blank notebooks, inspiring bookmarks, and encouragement to write, draw, and imagine.  She also sent a copy of her new book, Inside Outside, that we cannot wait to read and work with.  And the wrapping was a celebration in itself!

And today, the last day before the break, we did our best to keep students focused on learning. We had a spectacular science lesson on buoyancy with our science teacher…and after working on claim, evidence, and reasoning for a little over a week with relation to buoyancy, students did some outstanding science writing today!  (More on that in another post)  We also continued our study of geometry by asking students to create a holiday or winter scene made up of geometric shapes.  There were some pretty clever geometric scenes to celebrate!

And in my life outside of school there were also indications of celebration.  At my meeting at the local science museum on Saturday, even the dinosaur fossil was getting in the holiday spirit and adding to the celebration by sporting a santa hat!

And we’ve had rain!  Yes, it’s annoying when trying to drive on freeways with people who don’t know a thing about driving in the rain.  Roads flood, traffic crawls, students are cooped up inside all day, everything is soggy…and we are celebrating.  We desperately need each and every drop right now.  And honestly, the cloudy skies are such a novelty that I can’t resist taking shot after shot.  I fell in love with this seagull enjoying the unusually moist air shortly before sunset.

And although my husband brought a tree home on Sunday, it is still sitting bare in the living room waiting for celebratory decorations.  It’s a beautiful tree and I had some fun taking photos and playing with the focus of the foreground and background as I snapped a few photos of my cat, Phil through the branches.

What are you celebrating right now?  It might be Hanukkah or Christmas or rain…or even a two week break from your usual routine.  Snap a few shots and share celebrate through your images.

You can post your photo alone or along with some words: commentary, a story, a poem…maybe even a song! I love to study the photographs that others’ take and think about how I can use a technique, an angle, or their inspiration to try something new in my own photography. (I love a great mentor text…or mentor photo, in this case!)

I share my photography and writing on social media. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter using @kd0602. If you share your photos and writing on social media too, please let me know so I can follow and see what you are doing. To help our Weekly Photo community find each other, use the hashtag #celebrate for this week and include @nwpianthology in your post.

It’s time to celebrate!  What says celebration to you?  Can’t wait to see your version of celebrate as you share your world through your lens.