High Chair - Rituals, Routines, and Small Places

Sage Investigates

Photo by Amy LV

Click the arrow to hear me read this poem to you.

Students - Watching and thinking about animals is funny!  Our children use special voices when they imagine what our dogs and cats would say if they could speak English.  This poem comes from an old collection about a new baby, and I just found it and cracked right up.

Like us, animals have rituals and routines that they follow through their days.  A pig belonging to a friend of ours begins each morning at sunrise roaming beneath apple and pear trees.  Our dog Eli used to always spend each morning roaming under the high chair.  Can you think of any rituals that an animal you know follows?  What about you?  What do you do again and again, the same way each time?  This repeated action might be a neat idea for a poem.

Did you notice how the middle lines of today's poem goes back and forth?  I like to do that in a poem when there is movement between two beings or happenings.  You might have also noticed that the first two lines and the last two lines rhyme.  They're like bookends, tying this whole wee oaty circle poem together.

Today's verse is titled after a place, one piece of furniture that we have not had in our home for years.  Each place deserves its own poem.  Don't you think so?

Did you know that Cheerios are the most popular breakfast cereal in the United States?  The Cheerios company is 72 years old, and you can find the factory in Buffalo, NY, only about thirty minutes from where we live.  If you drive near the Cheerios factory, you can smell Cheerios.  Really!  (Buffalonians can even wear shirts displaying this fact.)  Once, several years ago, the factory donated many old Cheerios boxes to me for a bookmaking project.

Here is another baby and cereal poem from The Poem Farm archives, titled Baby Cereal. Can you tell that feeding babies was a theme of my life for several years?

Would you like to make a guitar or a dollhouse out of a Cheerios box?  Well, you can. These instructional videos by Joel Henriques are sponsored by Cheerios, but you could use almost any light cardboard box for the crafts.  Joel's blog, made by joel, is full of neat things to make.

Laura Purdie Salas is hosting this week's Poetry Friday extravaganza over at writing the world for kidshttp://www.laurasalas.com/blog/pf-buckled-bricks/.  Don't miss the new and old friends and poems!

Please share a comment below if you wish.

To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.

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How to Hold a Baby & Margy Grosswendt

Georgia and Kittens: 

Crackers, Footloose, and Xylophone

Photo by Amy LV

Click the arrow to hear me read this poem to you.

Students - This is another how-to poem, that bossy kind of poem I like to write sometimes. Again, this one comes from a collection of new-baby poems that I once wrote.  They never became a book, but I like coming back and visiting them, remembering when our children were small.

You will see how each line of this poem gives one more thing not to do when holding a baby.  The alternating lines rhyme, and I tried to write a wee bit of a silly ending.  It would be terrible to have a big sneeze just as the baby is about to fall asleep!

When I shared this poem with my daughter Georgia, she said, "This poem is true for holding cats too."  She would know...we have cared for many kittens around here.

Today I am very grateful to welcome Margy Grosswendt, a real estate agent and dancer from Hawaii. Margy contacted me several months ago when she planned to bring FOREST HAS A SONG with her on a trip to volunteer in an orphanage in Bosnia.  Her creative movement work with these children is very inspiring, and I am honored to feature her story today. Welcome, Margy.

Margy Grosswendt Selling Real Estate in Hawaii

Photo by Hub Grosswendt, Margy's Husband

I began my lifelong study of dance late, age 14 in California and in college, I developed creative movement classes for preschool and a local kindergarten for an independent study credit. All these years, I kept those notebooks, sketches, and lesson plans from that creative movement project.  

I ended up moving to Hawaii, obtained my real estate license in 1977, raised two children with my husband, and kept dancing: jazz class for many years, ballet on and off, yoga, Pilates, aerobics, personal training, and now Gyrotonic and back to jazz dance. I feel very strongly that it’s vital to find something that you like to do, something that speaks to you in a way that you could describe this "activity" as a passion.  It may become your life's work or perhaps just your life's hobby,but it is with you always.  

Fast forward to 2009. I was 54 years old and I found myself feeling bored.  No wonder, I'd been selling real estate for over 30 years on an island, no less.  One quick solution was to take a solo trip to Europe, where I'd never been.   While in Ljubljana, Slovenia, I thought, "I wonder why Yugoslavia had a different form of communism than what I just witnessed in Poland...."  

This idea led me to my 2012 trip to Sarajevo, Bosnia and Belgrade, Serbia.  For some reason Sarajevo and Bosnia hit me hard.  Sarajevo, the capital city of Bosnia with a population of 350,000 - 400,000, is the multi-ethnic jewel box of a city where I now regularly visit and volunteer in an orphanage.  During the war, from 1992 – 1995, there was a 3-1/2 year siege and this modern city was cut off from the world.  The residents had no water, no food, no power, and no windows.   I feel there is enormous PTSD in Sarajevo today as they struggle to rebuild and move forward just 18 years later. (Consider the U.S. Civil War and our North/South 150 years later.)  

The next day, without telling anyone in my tour group, I took a taxi to an orphanage, walked in and said, "Hi!  I have Lady Gaga on my iPhone....I think I could help the kids and the staff here..."  I went back a second time (without telling anyone in our tour group) and this time talked my way into the dormitory area.  The children were just adorable.  They could understand me, although not strong English speakers, and were very excited when I mentioned Lady Gaga music.  So were the women staff.  As the tour left Sarajevo, I told the group about my visits and my desire to return and teach dance/movement to the kids and staff there.  People were looking at me like "Yeah, great idea, you'll never do it..."  And I didn't know if I would or could.  

Returning home in June of 2012, I sent the orphanage an e-mail and they immediately responded with "Come back.  We'd love to have you!"  Obstacles and excuses came into my mind, and then I went looking for my 39-year old notebooks on creative movement from UC Santa Cruz.  Pages and pages and pages of details and lesson plans gave me confidence and I thought, "You know - you are now 57 years old.  You've made a connection.  Go back now, or it’s going to be a pipe dream.”  So I committed to them and returned in October 2012 for a month.  It went really well.  The funny thing is it didn't occur to me to do any online research about teaching creative movement to children today.  I just used my own material and my life experience and improvised.  I was told by the director that I was the best volunteer he'd had in 17 years, the psychologist concurred, and said I'd broken all roadmaps of holding attention for the 3-5 year olds in my 50-60 minute lessons; these kids had not been able to sustain attention longer than 15 minutes.  I was floored; I just did what I was supposed to do.  Saying goodbye to the dedicated teens who came to class every day was very difficult.

I promised them I would return in 6 months.  And as I had to keep this promise to these children, I did just that in May of 2013.  This time I had more playlists, more props, and a lot more research and ideas developed.  It went just as well and in fact I probably worked with more kids.  I asked the psychologist for smaller classes, and I came up with a great "stretching for fudbal (soccer)" which many of the boys are just wild about, girls, too.  So there we are doing calf stretches one leg back to "Moonlight Sonata,"  plie/releve with feet parallel to "Ode to Joy" - for soccer! 

I wanted so much to read FOREST HAS A SONG and have the kids make up a movement/dance about the forest, as Bosnia is covered in beautiful trees.  For the most part, the mines have been cleared and the ground is safe.  All of that is in the past.  Part of my idea was to work within their environment and be grateful for the beauty in Bosnia - the forest, rather than a book about the ocean which would be read in Hawaii, for instance.   

Children Reading Together

Photo by Margy Grosswendt

One twelve year old boy read the book to the other children.  I had shown the book to my Bosnian translator/assistant Dzevad (Jjavad) and he was worried about getting the nuance of the words right.  We were in the second to last week and I just sat down with the teens and began reading in English, with Dz sitting behind me doing his best to translate.  All of a sudden, this boy tugged on Dzevad's sleeve saying, "I want to read..." (in English). This lovely boy read so very beautifully with English that resembled British English.  Some of the words were difficult, but he would stop and sound them out.  

Then I asked the kids to find a part they liked and to Enya's "The Memory of Trees" they danced.  For Bosnia.  For moving forward.  For the appreciation of the beauty they have in their country.

The older kids used the scarves for movement; the 3-5 year olds invented costumes with them. I found that all ages enjoyed free time moving to music with scarves.  Fortunately, there's no mirror in the room.  In this digital age, much of what children come up with is reproduction from the TV or their computers.  Creative movement using your own body moving to music in improvised creative dance is an opportunity for children to use their imaginations and both express feelings and create images that are completely originals.  This is a gift; it is difficult to find a venue that inspires true originality.

The entire session took my breath away.  

Dancing to Enya's "The Memory of Trees"

Photo by Margy Grosswendt

I enjoy and have learned much from the Maria Hanley's blog Maria's Movers.  In addition to FOREST HAS A SONG, I used Eric Carle books with the emphasis on animals and movement; they were a big hit.  I also read the 1930s book about the train THE LITTLE ENGINE THAT COULD (“I think I can.  I think I can.”)  which they had never heard of before.  The littlest children, ages 2-1/2 to 5, enjoyed anything with animals.  

Needless to say, my creative juices are flowing and my mind is expanding.  I am excited and exhilarated by the challenge. I am walking everywhere to build strength, taking classes for more ideas.  Choreographing jazz routines for the teenagers and praying my body holds together.  I am now 58 years old staring down old age and retirement with another way to do it.  

I want to give back.  To people - women and children – who don’t have a fraction of the privilege and opportunity we have in America.  Mine is a self-funded Peace Corps under the radar direct effort. I think of the older kids - now they have 9 weeks with me and daily class; they now know a lot.  They can stretch before they go to bed at night.  They can breathe deeply and relax each part of their body when they can't sleep.  They can do cat backs, tree pose, plie/releve, and basic turns.  They have tools to deal with life in Bosnia just 18 years after war.  The little ones: why, they're just waking up to connection and creative play.  

I am not a professional dancer nor a professional dance teacher, nor a licensed dance therapist.  I am an American businesswoman who has had the distinct privilege of studying dance and various exercise modalities for over forty years.  My end goal is to offer this mind and body movement work, the practice of which is therapeutic, to these children so that it can help them now and throughout their lives.

I welcome suggestions of children’s books that inspire movement.

Here you can see and hear Margy's interview on the Bosnian television program RED!.  (Please note: the interview is in English, but the over-translation makes understanding the English difficult.)

Thank you, Margy, for telling us about this important work, for teaching us about the possibilities of creative movement as a means of expression and joy with music, with literature...for life.

Margaret is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup over at Reflections on the Teche.  Head on over there to enjoy this week's garden of poems and poem thoughts.

Please share a comment below if you wish.

To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.

Like The Poem Farm on Facebook for more poems, articles, and poemquotes.

Visit Sharing Our Notebooks to peek in all kinds of notebooks.

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Baby Cereal and Fourth Grade Poets

Yum!

by Amy LV

Click the arrow to hear me read this poem to you.

Students - Today's poem is an older one, and it's from a whole collection of baby poems that I have written.  Since Mark and I have three children, we have lots of baby stories, and for a time, I thought that I might join my baby poems together into a book.  Now I don't think so.  I am working on different projects, and so the baby poems are sitting and waiting for another day, another month, another year.

You may have noticed that every line of today's poem begins with the same word.  I got the idea to try this from a poem titled Good Books, Good Times!,  from a book by the same name, by Lee Bennett Hopkins.  There's another interesting technique to notice too, another idea I learned from Lee's poem.  Can you find it?

To write this little poem, I used Lee's great poem, "Good Books, Good Times!" as a mentor poem.  This is a great thing to do.  Find a poem you love, notice something you find interesting about the writing, and then try that interesting thing yourself!  Stand on that poet's shoulders to attempt something new.

Today I am happy to host fourth grade teacher Nathan Monaco and his students from the Arcade Elementary in the Pioneer Central School District.  I thank them for sharing their poetry unit journey.  Welcome, Nathan and students...

This year my 4th grade classroom had fun with an author study unit about poetry using Amy VanDerwater’s writing.  She was generous enough to allow me to use her poetry and her artwork from The Poem Farm as freely as I wanted.  The unit wound up being 3-4 weeks long, and I combined Amy’s poetry with other themes I had learned about through writer’s workshop.

Aiden's Notebook

At the beginning of the poetry unit, my students were less than enthused to say the least.  They shared their malcontent about poetry in general and basically summed it up as boring.  I let them know that they had not been taught poetry by me yet and that they were going to be learning about a poet who they had never heard of.  Each student received a bound copy of a book that my teaching assistant and I had made.  This book contained some of Amy’s poetry split up into sections according to the "technique" sections (line breaks, question poems, mask poems, personification, etc.) on The Poem Farm website.

Before delving into the different types of techniques, my class spent one week learning about the 5 Doors of poetry by Georgia Heard, using each door to think about poems by Amy.  If you have never heard of Georgia Heard, she has a book titled Awakening the Heart: Exploring Poetry in Elementary and Middle School where the idea of the 5 Doors comes from.  

Available through Heinemann

I spent one day on each of Georgia Heard's doors:

• The Heart Door – things that you love, things that are important to you

• The Memory Door – memories from your life: happy, sad, funny, etc

• The Wonder Door – things that you are wondering about, questions you have

• The Observation Door – things that you observe in the world around you

• The Concerns About the World Door – things that concern you, or things that you are thinking about for the world, issues in the world.

One could also invent/introduce all kinds of other doors such as a humor door, but I decided to leave that out as 4th graders can take that too far and ruin the whole mojo of taking poetry seriously.

Day 2 - The Wonder Door

by Evelyn

Day 2 - The Wonder Door

by Gabbie

After the week of comparing Amy’s poetry to the 5 Doors, we were ready to explore her techniques as described in her website.  We read her poetry aloud, discussed why her poems were organized in such a way, patterns the students saw, and of course we talked about the importance/unimportance of rhyming in poetry.  Only one technique was talked about each day, but we kept track of the different techniques on poster boards in the room.  If students were compelled to continue working with one technique, I allowed it, and as the unit went on there was always a technique that a student felt comfortable worked with.  The class spent one week on the different techniques as well.

Week 2 - Personification
by Cheyenne

Our  last week of this unit was spent publishing through a company called Studentreasures, a company that binds student work in hardcover for free.  The actual publishing process for the company is a little tedious, (it took a whole week to publish poetry), but it was completely worth it.

Published Book Cover
by Andrew

Published Inside Book Page
by Marissa

We completed our unit in late March/early April.  Now, in the beginning on June, I still have students choosing to create poetry during writer’s workshop time.  Some students have even created poetry journals, and I would be very confident saying that all students thoroughly enjoyed the poetry unit.

Thank you again to Nathan and his fourth graders for sharing their journey today.  I feel lucky to have had my poems included as part of their study.

All best to all of you for a beautiful week full of poetry and adventure!

Please share a comment below if you wish.

To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.

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Baby Dreams & Poetry Month

Baby Dreams
by Amy LV

Students - Sometimes I wonder and imagine what other people and animals are thinking and doing inside of their minds.  This poem came from such a place.  I thought about our children when they were babies, and I wondered what they dreamed about.  Of course I do not know, so I made it up.  Writing is great like that.  If you don't know something...imagine that you do, and write from that place.  Your brain at work!

Teachers - This is also a list poem, a simple poem structure which often ends with a twist, or in this case, a very short line.  Writing list poems is a great thing to try on as a class, even at the end of a science or social studies unit.

If you want to know more about dreams and dreaming, visit Wonderopolis, an incredible resource for all sorts of wonders.

You may know that I have been participating in a March Madness poetry tournament over at Ed DeCaria's blog, Think Kid, Think!  The whole concept is so clever, and I made a bunch of new poemwriting friends. Now I am out, and there are only 4 poets left.  We can keep reading and enjoying and following the madness here for about another week, and the new poems go up on Saturday morning!

Happy almost National Poetry Month...

To celebrate April, I will be doing three special things.  The first is a Dictionary Hike, which you can read about here or at the top left hand corner of this blog. Please feel free to join in for any letter you wish, maybe the first letter of your name?

The second special thing is that I will be featuring poet-notebooks over at Sharing Our Notebooks, my blog dedicated to notebooks.  So far we will be peeking into notebooks of Allan Wolf, Janet Wong, and Rebecca Kai Dotlich!  Stay tuned.

Finally, you can watch for a few poetry book giveaways here throughout the month.  I'll let you know about those and also where I will be sharing around the Internet. (Yesterday I recorded my first poetry video...with sheep...so funny!)

Guess what? The Poem Farm is 2 years old now.  What began as a whim to write a poem each day for a month in 2010 grew to a poem each day for a whole year and then...well...I just stayed.  Thank you so much for reading and visiting, and I appreciate all of your kindness and sharing.  

Heidi is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup over at My Juicy Little Universe. Don't miss the fun on this last Friday before National Poetry Month begins.

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