Make a How-To Poem and a New Craft Too

Tree Eraser Stamps

Photo by Amy LV

Students - The older I get, the more I realize what makes me happiest.  I am happiest when I am making something new.  And this craft, described step-by-step in today's poem, is a neat one that you might like to try. It's easy and so rewarding to make stamps from erasers. You can use your stamps to make your own cards or even wrapping paper.

Here's a picture of my stamp-making supplies.  You don't need much to make your own stamp.

Stamp Making Supplies

Photo by Amy LV

Today's poem is a poem that teaches how to do something.  It's a procedural, or how-to poem.  If you wish to write  a poem like this one, you might think about something that makes you happiest, or something you would like to teach someone else to do.  Then, line-by-line...show your reader how to do this new thing.

Christina is the winner of last week's giveaway for five copies (thank you, Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell!) of HERE WE GO.  Christina, please send me an e-mail to amy@amylv.com with your snail mail address, and I will share it with Janet.

Karen is hosting this week's Poetry Friday roundup over at Karen Edmisten.  Please stop by and visit. We share poems each week, and everyone is invited.

Please share a comment below if you wish.

If you are under 13 years old, please comment only with a parent 

Walking Stick, Fifth Grade Poets, & Kindness

Swiss Army Knife

Photo by Amy LV

Students - Spring is here in Western New York, and that means we'll all be out hiking more regularly.  Hiking often means finding and carving walking sticks...we love to peel the bark and carve into sticks, watching the wood chips fall to earth.  Today's poem celebrates this small joy and captures the feeling I have in the woods when I whittle and walk with a stick that I found.

This poem is one of many that I wrote for my forthcoming collection with Clarion/Houghton Mifflin - WITH MY HANDS: POEMS ABOUT MAKING THINGS.  I have been finishing my revisions on this collection (so excited) and know now that this poem will not actually be in the book.  I just wanted to share it here for all of you hikers and whittlers.

Today I am very happy to welcome fifth grade teacher Adrienne Moran and her poets from Douglas J. Regan Intermediate School in the Starpoint Central School District in Lockport, NY.  They spent a lot of time this winter/spring reading and writing poetry, and it is a joy to have the chance to share their work here.  Thank you, poets!  Please enjoy this slideshow of these fifth graders' poetry and process.

You can control the speed of the slideshow with the arrows on the right bottom corner.

So much gratitude to Adrienne Moran and her students.  I am thrilled that they were willing to share their poetry..and their process...here on this beautiful spring day.

And now for a giveaway...

Learn More at Force Field for Good

I am excited and grateful to offer a giveaway of two copies of Force Field For Good, the kindness CD by my friend, great person and writing teacher extraordinaire, Barry Lane.  Barry asked me to share "More Than a Number," "Xenophobia" and also to contribute to a few of the songs on this CD, and I am honored to be part of it. I asked Barry to offer a few words about Force Field for Good, and he responded:

“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”
~Aristotle

At this time of unprecedented peace in the history of humanity, we need songs and anthems to help both young and old see that peace and unity are not unrealistic fantasies. Peace and unity are possible through belief and active daily struggle.

Like the Starship Enterprise, this CD of 17 songs is a vessel to carry forth an ever- advancing civilization toward unity. Sing these songs with your children and your students. Teach them that the dream of peace becomes real when we know our higher selves and offer our gifts to others.

This CD is also part of a book and curriculum of the same title, Force Field for Good, by Barry and Colleen Mestdagh.  Barry has offered two CDs to two commenters on today's post.  Please leave a comment to enter, and I will announce the two winners next week.

Thank you, Barry!

Michelle is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup over at Today's Little Ditty.  All are welcome!

Please share a comment below if you wish.

Whittle a Little - Pick Up an Object & Write

Hope's Spoon

Photo by Amy LV

(I will include audio for this poem as soon as my voice returns in full!)

Students - One of my New Year's resolutions is to do more exploratory writing in my notebook.  This means that I plan to write more pages, even when I don't have any idea what I will write.  The purpose of the writing has been and will be to discover what is rattling around my skeleton and head.  What exactly am I thinking and wondering and hoping?  So often we don't know this until we write it down. Donald Murray called such writing, "writing for surprise."  For me, this feels like magic!

The best part of writing for surprise is when my mind makes a small leap into playfulness.  This happened the other day as I looked around my desk for something to write about and found the small handmade spoon you see atop this post.  Our daughter Hope whittled this spoon a couple of years ago at summer camp (see Ricardo demonstrate this at Hawk Circle Camp here), and she made the bowl part of the spoon (see how it is dark?) by placing a coal on the wood and letting it burn out that perfect curve.

I picked up the spoon, turned it around in my hands, and wrote.  You will notice repetition of one of my favorite-sounds-in-the-alphabet - short i.

You might wish to try this technique for idea-finding.  Just look around, pick something up, and go.

(Another one of my New Year's resolutions?....Learn to whittle!)

Tabatha is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup over at The Opposite of Indifference. Visit there, and you will find links to many other blogs hosting poetry and poemlove today.  For those of you who are new to Poetry Friday, all are always welcome and invited to travel around from blog to blog, making new poetry friends, commenting and adding your blog into the week's menu if you like.  We are a happy band of poetry-celebrators, and we are glad that you are here!

Please share a comment below if you wish.

Bean Mosaics - Making Things & Giving Things

Bean Boat

by Amy LV

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

Students - This poem goes along with a set of poems I will soon (in a couple of years) publish in a book with Clarion.  The book will be titled WITH MY HANDS: POEMS ABOUT MAKING THINGS.  Today's poem is dedicated to Mary Lee Hahn, supreme teacher and maker and gardener and photographer and so much more.  Last year, she and I were walking and talking about life, and she told me how her after school Environmental Club made bean mosaics together.  

Mary Lee says, "Environmental Club is such a gift because I don't have to be accountable to state or standards or administration about the activities we do. Something as small as observing soup beans that have been soaking for a couple of days until the embryo starts to develop and then making a mosaic on a paper plate with dry beans can be enough to fill an hour with the wonder of creativity and the knowledge that a small bean plant lies dormant in each of the seeds we use for our designs." 

Of course I could not get Mary Lee's thoughts out of my mind, and those mind-thoughts turned into this poem.  This one's for you, Mary Lee and students!

You can find some simple directions for making bean mosaics of your own over at KinderART.

What do you like to make?  You might make that project into the subject of a poem!

I am a maker and am most happy at work with my hands.  Right now I'm making some very easy and cozy knitted handwarmers.  These warm the hands but leave the fingers free for driving or for other work or movement.  They are fun to make and fun to give. Soooo.....

Cozy Handwarmers - Surprise Color Giveaway!

Photo and Handwarmers by Amy LV

Please leave a comment on today's post to win a free pair of hand knitted fingerless mitts...knitted by me in a surprise color!  Please leave your comment by next Thursday, Halloween, to be entered in this drawing.  I will announce the winner on Friday, November 1.

November 3, 2013 - Matt Forrest Esenwine of Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme  is the winner of the handwarmers!  Please, Matt, send me a private message with information about whether the handwarmers will be for you...or for someone else.  This will help me determine size and color!

Irene Latham is hosting Poetry Friday with 1,000 goodnesses.  Stop by her place at Live Your Poem, and celebrate her 1,000th blog post with all kinds of fun.  

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.

Follow me on Twitter or Pinterest!