Unforgettable Childhood

My girls love to get an empty notebook. There minds are full of stories that they can’t wait to get on paper.

On one of my last trips to the library I found a really cool book, Look At My Book by Loreen Leedy.

Each of the girls grabbed a brand new notebook and we opened this book for ideas and inspiration. This book breaks down writing into brainstorming, genres, research, illustration. It is a step-by-step book on creating a book using their imagination and creativity. I absolutely love it and they did, too.

My oldest daughter did a great job brainstorming using a Word Web.

My middle daughter made a list of Nature words before she began her story to get an idea where she wanted to go with it.

My youngest daughter doesn’t write yet so she illustrated pages and then told me the story that needed to be added to the page.

My girls are on a summer break from school, but this is a fun way to get them to keep learning. I can’t wait to see where their imaginations take them next time we sit down to write.

Thursday we continued to celebrate Read Across America and Dr. Seuss’ Birthday with a Poetry Party.

We started by reading a few classic nursery rhymes. Then I read the girls Eugene Field’s Wynken Blynken and Nod Poem from my American Poems book. This book belonged to my Great Grandmother. The publish date is 1905. The girls thought that was really cool.

Of course we had to move on to two of my favorites, Jack Prelutsky and Shel Silverstein. After we had read a variety of poems we were ready to create our own. Each of the girls had a pencil in hand and a new notebook.

We started with Shape Poems. It took the girls a little thinking before they decided what shapes they were going to use. Taylor decided to write about Roller Coasters. She wrote her poetry in the shape of a roller coaster. Here is her poem:

Roller Coasters, Roller Coasters! Go Up, go down, around, upside down. Roller Coasters, Roller Coasters! Something you cannot beat! Make sure you don’t go on them right after you eat!

We moved on the Name Poems. This is always fun. Even Nadia joined in the fun.
Nice

Angel

Diva

Ice Cream Eater

Adorable

The girls finished their fun with Rhyming Poems. It was interesting to see what words that they came up with in their rhymes. For some reason Peru ended up in almost all of their poems.

Our snack today was Dr. Seuss Hats.

We started out melting White Chocolate Chips in a double broiler.

The only other ingredients were Oreos, Big Marshmallows and Frosting. Cover each oreo with melted white chocolate and place a marshmallow on top.

Place in freezer for a few minutes to set the chocolate. Pipe on red frosting lines for the hat.

Another day of Dr. Seuss fun is done. Today we finish off our week with Illustration Stations.

Our Seuss-filled week continued on Wednesday with the topic of writing. My girls love to write. I have never seen kids get so excited about empty notebooks and new pencils.

We started our activities with letter writing. We talked about how people email and text and they don’t send handwritten letters very much anymore. I gave each of them a notebook and envelopes to encourage them to write letters. I was thinking they would write to a grandparent or cousin. When I asked my daughter and her friend Calico who they were writing to, they said each other. . .

I wondered how Nadia would do today since the only thing she really knows how to write is her name. She still had fun. She drew a picture to put in her envelope.

Our second activity was decorating Composition books. I gave them each a new comp book and they went crazy with my scrapbook paper.

I didn’t think I would ever get the spray adhesive off of my fingers, but they really turned out cute. This would be a great gift for some of their friends, their very own Personalized Journals.

Today is our Poetry Party. We will be looking at different types of poetry and creating our own. This has been a great week for all of us. The best part. . .the tv hasn’t been on. Next week we talked about working on a play.