“We should make another movie on the computer, Mom. That was fun.” Logan reminded me this morning of a major project we did some time ago that involved scripting a story and making a photo slideshow: ‘The Baby Who Ate the World!” A 12″ foam model of the planet Earth and Logan’s little brother, Luke, inspired us [...]
I just saw a news-piece about the top passwords that people use to guard their access to their electronic accounts. The fact that so many use PASSWORD, 123456, 654321, ABC123, not only demonstrates a disturbing lack of concern for information security, but also a frightening lack of creativity. While some are born with the “creativity [...]
My first grade teacher, Miss Mary Bodi, spent a lot of time bringing out the writer in her students. Regularly throughout the year, she asked us to choose a picture from a file. In it were magazine advertisements, clipped comics, and other images she’d collected. One-by-one, were called to sit next to her at a [...]
If your writers-in-training resist sitting for a fifteen-minute jounal entry or other writing exercise, you might have some success weaning them into writing “a sentence a day.” This can be done on a computer, or handwritten in a notebook. I prefer the latter, since flipping to the story will maintain the quick and easy nature [...]
This December, we read and enjoyed a couple of Christmas books this season with a similar theme–destroying a Christmas play. Both books focus on abhorent characters who display an offensive behavior or two or three, but while this will attract your young reader’s attention, he/she will absorb the overall positive lesson behind the tale. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever–By Barbara [...]
“Fall fell: so that’s it for the leaf poetry” from AR Ammons, Called into Play Autumn can be especially inspirational to writers. Change is often an impetus for creativity, and big transformations occur as we begin the creep toward winter. To while away a Saturday morning last week, we made some leaf prints on heavy-bond [...]
When I talk about reading with my kids with other parents—-that is, either me or my husband sitting down with them to read aloud or share the reading duties—-I hear these responses like these: “I wish I could find the time to do that,” or “we’re just too busy to read.” I understand completely. Between [...]
Imagine—celebrating thirteen days of Halloween instead of just one…As of this writing, there are precisely thirteen days remaining until All Hallows Eve, making this the perfect day to review The 13 Days of Halloween By Carol Greene, Illustrated by Tim Raglin In this revision of the Christmas standard, The Twelve Days of Christmas, a charming ghoul [...]
We’ve got lots of books going — or we are about to get them going–at our house. Nothing escapes the necessity of multi-tasking in our wacky world, does it? Not even the relaxing practice of reading. I can only imagine that Logan, our 5th grader, must have picked up the habit from me. I always [...]
While we wait for the first of the leaves to make their way to the ground, how about some seasonal reading, the kind that you can fall into to escape all the raking? Here are my autumn favorites–Each makes creative use of language and is richly illustrated.These are books you can fall into as if they were piles of [...]