Whip Up a Recipe Poem!

Ahhh....

by Amy LV

Students - Today's poem grew from our new snow outside and from a new habit I have of making lists of things that make me happy.  I keep these lists in my notebook. Here's a snip of one from earlier this week.  You can see it has a wintry theme because winter is now here in Western New York.

Happy List

by Amy LV

I have always found lists to be helpful jumping off points for writing poems.  And sometimes the lists turn INTO poems as in the one you read above.  You might wish to try to write a recipe poem sometime too.  It could be about anything: Recipe for Friendship, Recipe for Good Sleep, Recipe for Befriending Cats...who knows? Recipes are almost like magic spells, and poems are almost like magic spells too...

My wish for you this week is that you will find and make time for many small things that make you happy.  This is my own goal these days, to put down my electronics and to make applesauce, fold Froebel stars, and spend more time outside. The busier life gets, the more important I find these things to be.

Teachers - You can find me on Twitter and Instagram at @amylvpoemfarm.  In these places I share more bits and pieces of life, including interesting teaching links and photographs of The Poem Farm.

Over at my other blog, Sharing Our Notebooks, you can find a very cool peek into Julie Patterson's notebooks. Leave a comment...and you just may win a book!

Lisa is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup over at Steps and Staircases.  Please stop by if you'd like to visit many different blogs, all celebrating poetry.  We meet every week, and we welcome all!

Tea!

Photo by Amy LV

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Cat's Recipe and Writer's Notebooks

 

Sarah Waits

Photo by Amy LV

Students - one of the great things about keeping a writer's notebook is that your writing just hangs out in there. You may not see value or meaning in one day's piece of writing, but it will be there, waiting for you. And then, a week, month, or year later...you may come back to it and find the value, find the meaning.

I wrote a version of this poem several months ago and let it just sit. And then on Sunday, our cat Sarah sat staring out of the front window as several fat Blue Jays zipped in for suet. "Snap!" went the picture. "Hmmm!" went the brain. I remembered this old poem, dusted it off, revised it a bit, and here you go!

I learned this song in Girl Scouts.  Do you know it?

Make new friends
but keep the old.
One is silver
and the other gold.

Here it is with a few little changes...for writing!

Write new thoughts
but keep the old.
One is silver
and the other gold.

Sometimes thinking and writing grows better with time and layers, the same way that trees grow ring-by-ring.  Try going back to some of your old writing, in notebooks or paper piles, and find something you'd like to visit again.  Set a time to just sit and reread what you've got.  Then, when the perfect day arrives, you will remember, "Oh!  I have an entry about that!"

You can peek inside some different notebooks (Naturalist! Artist! Novelist! Poet!) at my other blog home, Sharing Our Notebooks.

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Make a Snow Cone with Poem #285!

 

World's Largest Snow Cone

by Amy LV

Students - I love eating snow!  Freshly fallen snow is the yummiest, and every time I eat it, I am reminded of snow cones at the fair.  We had a snowfall this afternoon, and I thought about how our whole yard looked like one big fat snow cone.  Wouldn't it be fun to pour gallons of grape juice all over the hills and dig in?

Another thing we love to eat in wintertime (and anytime) is maple syrup.  Here is a delicious recipe for maple sugar on snow, a tasty treat you may remember from the LITTLE HOUSE books. My mother-in-law tells us how she used to eat this as a girl, and we've eaten it with much joy.  If you live somewhere snowy, make some for yourself.  If you don't live in a snowy place, tuck this idea away for a someday-snow-visit.

If you must have an electric snow cone maker, I have my eyes on this machine!

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