Sunday, October 17, 2010

Free Verse Week - #201 - Preserving Fall


It is Day #2 of Free Verse Week II, continuing through this Friday!


Today my daughters and I stayed home.  Phew!  It has been a busy couple of weeks, and so today we sat in the living room together drinking tea, knitting, reading, and playing with the dollhouse.  We did not take the hike I had imagined when I awoke, the hike which was supposed to send us home laden with leaves for pressing.  And since I did not live the day I imagined, I wrote a poem about that imagined day instead.  Tomorrow we will hike into the poem that rests on my paper tonight.

Students - it's funny the way that writing and living connect.  Sometimes we write things we wish to remember.  Sometimes we write things we wish to do.  This poem is an example of the latter.  What do you wish you had done?  Wish you will do?  Start there.  Wishes are rich.

If you live in a place where fall is singing its own anthem these days, and if you are looking for leaf-ideas, visit Our Big Earth to learn about pressing leaves between wax paper and  Gingerbread Snowflakes to learn about preserving leaves with Mod Podge.  You can find even more information about leaf crafting at Frugal Fine Living.  And if you're still feeling autumnal and artistic, read at Ten Kids and a Dog about how to make a beautiful Indian corn necklace, definitely on my list for this month.

(Please click on COMMENTS below to share a thought.)

9 comments:

  1. Thanks for the link up to Sherry's leave collecting post. I hope you're enjoying a wonderful fall weekend!

    Jane

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  2. Amy- so much to love here...you brought back memories of making leaf designs with my sons when they were little. This is my favorite season, and you captured it perfectly with "through orange light." Beautiful!

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  3. Beautiful! May your leaves continue to fly like "tiny angels." Love the way you created the original run-on word "oftoday" then repeated it into a memorable, dream-like chant.

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  4. Thank you Jane, Linda, and Charles. We did get out into a hike and the beautiful leaves yesterday, just as we'd hoped. Ahhhhh! A.

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  5. Amy, so many of your poems are How-To poems, and here is another one! I see a unique and useful book in the making with this connecting thread...it could be shelved either in the 700's crafts or the 811's! Oh, now I see -- you've got the label "craft resources." Yes, that's exactly it -

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  6. It would be fun, wouldn't it, Cecilia, to do a poetry/craft book? It's great fun having a librarian friend to help me see things like this - thank you for your insight. A.

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  7. "Tomorrow we will hike into the poem that rests on my paper tonight."

    That's a poem in itself. And full of possibility. I want to hike into a poem *every* tomorrow!

    Do you know EMILY OF NEW MOON? L.M. Montgomery? How Emily (also a poet) talks about certain words or phrases hitting her heart in a certain way, causing a pang of longing, a flash of bittersweet joy? That's what happened to me when I read "skating them slowly."

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  8. that was a sweet poem , I am a pressed flower artist and i am always happy to find someone pressing and teaching kids too.
    Here is the link to my blog that has a huge picture I made with pressed leaves and mod podge.
    http://flowersbyterica.blogspot.com/2010/01/pressed-flowers-and-leaf-art-canadian.html
    I will share your link on my page at Facebook http://www.facebook.com/FlowerImpressions
    Peace and Happy Pressing, terica

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  9. Linda posted a beautiful fall picture and poem and now this lovely treat. Makes me want to write fall poems with my students. I wish we could find some fall leaves around here. In the deep south, things stay green (and hot) well into fall.

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