Tag Archives: tulips

Warming Up for Poetry Month: SOL23 Day 29

It’s hard to believe that National Poetry Month is right around the corner! The way our school calendar works, we typically miss the first week or so of April as we are on spring break. So…I’ve learned to get an early start!

The book, Daniel Finds a Poem by Misha Archer is a perfect way to get first graders thinking poetically. They love the way that Daniel learns about poetry from all the animals around the park–and crafts his poem from their remarks.

Then it was time for the students to start thinking about what poetry is. We started with the stem, Poetry is… As we began brainstorming ideas, we also considered how our senses might help us think beyond just things we can see. Students wrote, beginning their list of what poetry is. Today we returned to our writing, taking a look at where we started, considering the senses we hadn’t yet tapped into, and wrote for another ten minutes. Then we took out the highlighters. I asked students to pick their best (or favorite) three poetry is phrases and highlight them. Wow–there were some gems! Here is a small sampling…

Poetry is

the hugs that my mom gives me
moonlight skies with stars shimmering
the feel of hot water from the bathtub
the smell of salt in the sea when the waves hit the shore in the morning
the rustle of newborn blossoms coming out for spring
the bird tap dancing at the break of dawn

and…poetry is when you look at the sky to find your own dreams.

Oh…out of the minds and pencils of 6 and 7 year olds!

And of course, we had to do some art to create a display for our poetry. Tulips were our inspiration (see yesterday’s post). Using black oil pastel and liquid watercolor, we created vibrant tulip still life paintings.

So poetry month has been launched! How will you launch poetry month in your classroom? In your writing life?

Tulips: SOL23 Day 28

5 Replies

I love tulips! They seem to scream spring. Thank goodness that our local Trader Joe’s offers these seasonal blooms for a reasonable price.

On Sunday I bought a bouquet of yellow blooms to take into the classroom. Since I had planned a project where my students would draw and paint a tulip still life, a splurge of bright yellow flowers seemed just right. And add to the equation that it is parent conference week, I couldn’t not buy them, right?

So now they are sitting in a mason jar on the table in the classroom. When I walked in this morning, the first thing I noticed is that they had changed since I left yesterday. Tulips seem to dance and sway, even as they sit in a vase with no wind around at all. I love to watch the blossoms open, becoming rounder and more dynamic.

I’m enjoying these little bits of sunshine as I teach and as I talk with parents. And with rain expected tomorrow, I’m thinking I will appreciate them even more. Two days of sunshine and warm weather are teasing thoughts of spring…and with spring break just a few days away, spring is on the brain.

So why do I feel the need to justify the purchase of a bouquet of tulips? I don’t hesitate to splurge on a latte now and then. I think I need to treat myself to a few more flowers–maybe especially for the classroom–to bring that spring feeling inside and to make each day feel more special and more festive.

Tulips and Poetry: SOL22 Day 29

11 Replies

As March comes to an end, National Poetry Month is right around the corner. To get a bit of a head start–especially since we begin our Spring Break next week–I decided we needed to immerse ourselves in some poetry this week.

Poetry is nothing new in our class. We study a poem each week and then illustrate it, creating an anthology of poems we’ve worked with during the school year. We’ve written some poems of our own here and there. But the time is right for a deeper dive.

Daniel Finds a Poem by Micha Archer is a perfect book to get started. The first graders loved that the poem Daniel wrote was a compilation of the answers from all the animals that answered Daniel’s question, “What is poetry?” And it set the perfect stage for our own Poetry Is… brainstorm. After a start yesterday, we took this idea further today, stretching out ideas and embellishing them with vivid description. Here’s a few examples:

Poetry is a glass of warm hot chocolate on a cold, snowy winter day.
Poetry is a grasshopper jumping and hopping and bouncing all around the fields.
Poetry is a coconut with the flavor inside and the outside is so hard and thick like a layer of armor.
Poetry is a slippery fish, as beautiful as a butterfly.
Poetry is the sound of my dad snoring.

And somehow, in my mind, poetry and flowers are a perfect pairing. I had purchased some tulips and daffodils from Trader Joes over the weekend, knowing I wanted students to have a close up look at these symbols of spring (that are not commonly found growing around here). Yesterday students used a black oil pastel on watercolor paper to do a directed drawing of tulips in a vase. Today, we used liquid watercolor to create vibrant paintings of these beautiful spring flowers. The results are stunning!

Watercolor paintings drying on the classroom floor.

I plan to matte them along with the “Poetry Is…” writing. And I think I may have each student contribute one line to create a class Poetry Is poem for a poster to hang on our door! After all, National Poetry Month is right around the corner!

It’s the Small Things: SOL22 Day 27

7 Replies

Some days it’s all about the small things.

Not setting the alarm clock and sleeping in on Sunday morning. (Or at least not getting out of bed when you wake up even though there is no alarm going off.)

A walk on the beach with my sister who is visiting from the northern part of the state. And the sun even decided to come out to play after two days of thick, gray marine layer over the coast.

Dinner cooked by my husband (that part is not unusual) for my mom, my sister, and me–complete with a from scratch chocolate cake dessert. He manages to cook with love and care, even at a moment’s notice. He’s definitely a keeper!

Trader Joe’s flowers: tulips and daffodils to bring spring inside. And because I am planning an art project with my students tomorrow that features tulips, I wanted to bring the real thing into the classroom.

So I indulged and bought both tulips and daffodils. Last week we read a poem that included daffodils and my students didn’t seem familiar with them–so I was on the lookout for those inexpensive bunches that are around every spring at Trader Joes. And I had to have the tulips, even though they were only available in the larger bunch that was a bit pricier than I wanted. But…I have enough of each type of flower to bring some in the classroom and leave myself the bright beauty of spring on the dining room table!

Any small things bring you joy and appreciation today?

Looking Beyond Ugly

1 Reply

When I walked into the house today after work I noticed that the tulips in the vase on my dining room table were ready to throw out. They were leaning over, their dried blossoms hanging upside down nearly touching the table. I started to move them to the trash can…and then the afternoon light through the window shining on the near-dead plant caught my eye. And suddenly I could see the beauty in the crumbling blossoms that had seemed so ugly only moments before.

A photography tip aside: It was just last week that Joy from Joyfully Green had posted an article where she described the place–her dining room–that served as a photo studio because of the light it offers. (Joy has many tips to share…about photography and about living green.)

As a teacher, it’s my job to look beyond the ugly–the spaces where learning isn’t happening in the ways we want or expect–and figure out how to find the light that transforms. And it isn’t always easy. Sometimes it just seems easier to place blame, give in to frustration, or pass the buck. But then the light shines through my dining room window and I can look beyond the ugly and find the beauty.