Author: BBCo

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A Shape Full of Thanksgiving

 Concrete poetry is not child's play but rather the intersection where typography and poetry meet to play. Sir Ken Robinson reminds us that “…imagination is the source of every form of human achievement.” Concrete poetry is an invitation to imagine possibility.

So how do you begin to craft a shape poem? Of course there are many wonderful resources online, but the best place to begin is to remember that what seperates all poetry from prose is, first and formost, its shape. Each and every poem has a very specific arrangement on the page because white space, to the poet, is an extension of punctuation, directing the reader's eye to pause, move, breathe. Concrete poetry takes shape a step further into the realm of representation. For example, if your poem is about a blooming garden, your poem might be flower shaped. If your poem is about sorrow, it might take the shape of a teardrop. What I love about Constance's poem below is that the simple window shape draws me, the reader, to come near, to peer through the panes and contemplate the complexities of thankfulness with each drop drop drop that fabricates the window frame. 

Concrete poetry is not child's play.

So here's my idea. This week, when I introduce shape poetry to my young writers, I'm going to begin by exploring Constance's poem with them—a single statement with repeated words to form a shape. I'll invite them to meet me at the intersection where typography and poetry play. And together we'll imagine the shape of thanksgiving. Imagine the possibilites.

Why not join the fun? After all, "…'tis the season to be thankful!" We'd love to hear from you. Feel free to post your poems in the comment section of this post.

 

                                     Thanksgiving

 

The first  rain of the year  announces its  presence by every thick

drop                                     drop                                            drop

drop                                     drop                                             drop

drop                                     drop                                             drop

drop                                     drop                                             drop

drop                                     drop                                             drop

drop                                     drop                                             drop

drop                                     drop                                             drop

drop                                     drop                                             drop

on the  glass  drum  of  our  kitchen  window:  a rain that, with kind

drops                                     drops                                         drops

drops                                     drops                                         drops

drops                                     drops                                         drops

drops                                     drops                                         drops

drops                                     drops                                         drops

drops                                     drops                                         drops

drops                                     drops                                         drops

drops                                     drops                                         drops

they say, is  mother to the  stale cracked  skin of godforsaken lands.

 

 

-Kim & Constance

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Mimicry or Artistry

So many films for younger audiences, from Finding Nemo to The Incredibles to How to Train Your Dragon, teach them to take pride in being different. So many children’s movies tell kids that it’s important to “be yourself.” It’s ok to be a mutant or divergent. Today, in children’s films at least, individuality is being pushed as a positive virtue for young minds.

You are special.

Be yourself.

Yet, in real life, how often are children allowed to be themselves?

What about the real life world of education, are we really encouraging children to be themselves? 

I remember dropping out of an English class in middle school because I was having trouble adhering to its rules of writing. The reason? The problem wasn’t that I had little motivation to produce interesting, informed work. The problem was that I was using seven-instead-of-five-adjectives-per-paragraph. That I had one-too-many-sentences in my papers. That I wasn’t-using-enough-transitive-verbs.

The problem was that teaching me to mimic an example paragraph was easier than engaging me in the work of discovering my unique writer's voice.

This situation isn’t unique to my experience—it’s embedded in every textbook that would rather teach the rules, instead of the art, of writing. It’s encoded in every lesson that finds it easier to teach MLA formatting than the musicality of diction. Sometimes even well meaning educators turn unquantifiable aesthetic sensitivity into calculus, artistic standards into rules. 

This struggle didn’t become quite clear to me until I entered college. I remember sitting in a creative writing workshop during my freshman year, listening to two honors teachers discussing concrete poetry.

By “discussing” I mean “cutting to bits.”

I distinctly one of them saying, with a short laugh, “Oh, shape poetry! If you’re not in fifth grade, don’t do it.”

I then distinctly remember thinking of my high school writing teacher, who was a lover of shape poetry. Due to her influence, John Hollander’s “Swan And Shadow” is one of my favorite poems of all time.

Now, here were two artists whom I admired greatly, who wrote spectacular stuff and definitely were aware of what qualities made writing great. I was stuck between two opinions that seemed equally credible. I had no idea of what the rules were because there seemed to be two competing sets of rules.

That was the moment that I realized the importance of being myself.

In that moment, I realized that no one was going to tell me the “right” thing to do. In the end, I'm going to face many sets of legitimate opinions that clash over certain issues. And, in the end, it will be up to me to decide what I want to do with my writing. It’s up to me to decide whether shape poetry is worth consideration or not. (Spoiler alert: I believe it is.)

In the end, it’s important for us to teach children that after learning the rules, there will be moments when they will have to break them in order to assert their own voice. After learning the importance of using a certain proportion of adjectives in a paragraph, I should have been taught that Hemingway steered clear of adjectives and Fitzgerald brought them to the party in hordes. And, of course, students should be taught that in those moments when they don't even know what the rules are, but they sense something that just must be crafted to words on the page, they can confidently follow the creative impulse into the murky unknown knowing that the likes of EB White's Elements of Style will be waiting on the other side.

Remember, writing is a process and when it comes to writing the most important thing is to raise your voice. The most important thing is to be authentic, to be yourself.

And I mean it. 

 

-Constance

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Snail of Orange.

Orange

Imagination is just the thing to inspire young writers. 

To get started, visit our Pinterest: Snail of Orange

Juxtapose the grotesque and the delicious, the crude and the dainty by drawing inspiration from this snail—usually not considered the most beautiful or appealing creature-—created from an orange.

How can you create a beautiful concept out of something unexpected; something strange and slimy like a snail? Or vice versa?

Unexpected images are just the thing to quell writer's block. Think .

Here's another bit of fodder from Les Miserables: “One morning [Bishop D—] was in his garden, and thought himself alone, but his sister was walking behind him, unseen by him: suddenly he paused and gazed at something on the ground; it was a large, black, hairy, frightful spider. His sister heard him say:– ‘Poor beast! It is not its fault!’”

 

Example Haiku:

An Art Lesson

 

stamps of greasy lips

and fingertips on napkins are

unexpected flowers

 

-Constance

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Behold the Egg

Egg

This month my daughter Hannah turned 25, and my youngest son Søren turned 15. Once upon a time Reading Rainbow was a happy part of our literacy routine. Recently Sara came to visit and we stood in my kitchen humming the theme song, laptop in hand, anticipating LeVar. Surprisingly, what we gleaned from this little stroll down memory lane transcended sentimentality. The treasure struck us in the first four words of the episode: “Hi, behold the egg.” LeVar Burton looked us straight in the eye and took the better part of a minute (55 seconds to be exact) to enunciate four words.

Like Mr. Rogers before him, LeVar knew how to settle us into slow motion and slow motion is just what our children need to learn well.

Let’s face it. Overexposure to electronics is over stimulating, diverting precious brain space from creative thought. Letting the mind engage in the stillness of imagining utilizes areas of the brain that will be left inactive while engaging in electronics.

Children should not have difficulty sitting with a book for a long time.

Children should not have difficulty sitting with a pad of paper and colored pencils.

And children should not have difficulty sitting, without implements, enjoying their imagination in silence.

Our world is cluttered with all sorts of noise—auditory and visual. We are saturated. And the outcomes are disturbing. Rampant distraction is diminishing the capacity for contemplation and creativity. The din is overwhelming.

Let’s change the atmosphere. This fall, why not create a tradition of reading? Engaging with books helps children settle into slow motion so that imagination might thrive. And slow motion is stress sapping!

Back away from the vortex of fast-forward-too-muchness.

Sillness is a form of silence. And everyone knows that silence is golden, “Behold the egg.”

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Imagination and the Art of Reading

IMG_4879

Readers really love sharing their culminating thoughts about great stories in creative ways. Some of the fondest memories for Sara and me are the projects our children created inspired by great stories. There was the blue-striped papier-mâché dragon after reading My Father’s Dragon, the claymation stop action video after Perloo the Bold, handcrafted bonnets and stacked pancakes after reading Farmer Boy, and the spaceship constructed from empty soup cans, cardboard, and foil after The Wonderful Flight to Mushroom Planet.

During the fifth week, Section 5 of our Blackbird & Company Literature Discovery Guides, children are encouraged to reflect and respond creatively to the great story they read. They are provided with a variety of project options to spark ideas. Children not only have a chance to demonstrate their originality, organization, clarity of purpose, and critical thinking skills, more importantly this culminating endeavor will allow them to show off what they have learned in their own, uniquely creative way.

This week, as Sara and I sat around the table constructing multiple twin Lolly Dolls for a matching game (thanks Tea Wagon Tales for the adorable idea), Sara looked at our fashionista girls lined up on the table and exclaimed, “How cute would these be for a project tied to The Hundred Dresses?”

“So cute? Right?”

And, by the way, if you haven’t read The Hundred Dresses with your children, please read it soon! This is a terrific story to begin the school year. No spoiler alerts, but Wanda’s courage has been a topic of discussion in our home for years.

So with fall, fast approaching, make the most of Section 5. Remember that imagination connects to books.

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The Value of Curling Paper

Curl

Like verbal languages, the language of visual art has phonics of its own. By combining the 26 letters that scaffold the English language in a variety of ways, we are able to communicate vast complexities and wonders. By manipulating five simple elements—line, texture, shape, value, and color—we are able to communicate what can’t be written.

So how to begin a study of value?

Don’t outline! When handed pencil and paper and asked to translate a 3D scene to 2D, the comfort zone element is line. But drawings that begin with hard edges end up stiff and stuck. Outlines define edges but don’t help us see dimensionally.

Focusing on shapes of light and dark, rather than the edges of objects is the best way to being to shift out of line-drawing mode.

Light and shadow defines objects. Train your eyes to see like an artist, look for the light and shadow that defines objects.

The best way to begin is to apply pencil using the tilt and not the tip to mirror shadowy shapes. Smudge the shapes to blend and use an eraser to create light shapes. Try to create a range of value from the lightest light to the darkest dark. Use the background to define foreground objects.

The potential of value in drawing is to communicate the light and shadow and surface tones we see in order to create a three-dimensional illusion. So curl some paper and let edges fade into the background.

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Da Vinci Summer V: Craft a Found Poem

MakePoem

Think scavenger hunt.

Found poems are snips of non-poetic language gathered from unexpected places collaged into verse.

Think scraps of newspaper, snippets of conversation.

Think clipped magazine phrases woven to phrases you've invented.

Think scramble, unscramble.

Keep your eyes open, you never know where a sliver of poem might be lurking. 

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Da Vinci Summer V: How to Observe a Caterpillar

Cater

“Let us dig our furrow in the fields of the commonplace.” Jean-Henri Fabre

Children become science-minded by exploring their observations of the world around them. Science is much more than facts in a textbook. Facts are only a fraction of the picture. Science is a process that allows us to discover how the world works.

I remember one summer my brother being fascinated with caterpillars. One, in particular stands out in my mind. His name was Ralph. Yes, Ralph the caterpillar. My brother kept the fuzzy creature in a Stride Rite shoebox nested with a handful of twigs and torn leaves. What I remember most about the brief time that Ralph spent in my brother’s observation box before being set free, was my brother’s focused attention, magnifying glass in hand. While he did not keep a record of his observations, I know that my brother was honing his curiosity. But, I must admit, I’ve often wondered what his Observation Journals would have contained. How fun it would be to look back on an archive of his curiosity.

All four of my children have numerous journals of this sort and it is wonderful to look back and recognize the diversity and specificity of their unique observations.

Here is how to begin an Observation Journal:

Materials:

  • A binder to collect completed observations
  • Cardstock for drawing
  • Lined paper for writing
  • Pencil
  • Colored Pencils
  • Chalk Pastel
  • Thick and thin waterproof markers
  • Watercolor Pencils
  • Watercolor
  • Magnifying Glass

1. Look at the subject for a while.
  Look at what you are observing. Pick the object up, turn it around, use a magnifying glass to see texture and detail. Take your time and try to throw out any preconceived notions about the subject.

2. Talk about what is seen.
 Join the fun by engaging children in conversation about the details of the object being observed.

3. Draw the object with realistic detail.
 Encourage children to look at the lines, textures, and shapes. Have them think about proportions as they translate the three dimensional object to a 2-dimensional object on paper. When the drawing is complete, have them think about the color of the object and try to match the colors as close to the real thing as possible.

4. Read about the object.
 Find a book or internet article to find facts about the object being observed. Suggest that notes on a topic wheel might help to organize ideas.

5. Explore the object’s potential.
 What did you learn? What importance does the object hold in our world?

6. Write about the object. 
Combine and convey information gained through direct observation and research.

When children observe they utilize diverse reasoning modes that will, in turn, cultivate their ability to engage in the art of learning.

Why not begin the Observation Journaling with a caterpillar? Taking Fabre’s advice to heart, no need to travel to observe nature! Step out into your own backyard in search of a caterpillar or two. And, if need be,  transplant a caterpillar from the World Wide Web via your printer!

Provide your child with some colored pencils, a pitcher of ice water, and a cozy backyard perch. Curiosity will do the rest.

Here’s to Da Vinci Summer V, eyes open!