Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to those who celebrate. We had fun on Friday at my mom & dad's place. Gramma set up an easter egg hunt for cash filled eggs, and we colored the real eggs together with a tie dyed eggs kit. Really fun! It was also an early birthday celebration for my little monkey. Somehow my parents again managed to evade the camera all day. Kev had to work, but joined us for dinner, and then we all traveled home together.







I wish I could say the rest of our holiday weekend was as much fun. It went in the toilet. Literally. Our ancient toilet broke (we later found out there was a toe nail clipper lodged in it) and kept overflowing. It was something on our list to replace anyway, but the timing could have been better. So today we ended up at Home Depot to buy a replacement, and Kev spent the day hauling out the old one and installing the new. Another crappy holiday, in what has become an unfortunate string thereof...

Poets House: We Are Rivers with Richard Lewis

If you ever get the opportunity to attend one of the children's programs at Poets House, take it. And if it involves poet Richard Lewis, prepare to be enchanted. Mikro always has a wonderful time at his programs, and so do I. I never walk out without a new poem in my moleskine. This time, we considered our thoughts as rivers, watched a beautiful performance of Richard's poem, We Are Rivers, and made our own drawing and poem about our rivers of thought. Neither Mikro nor Kev are all that anxious to share theirs (and I can't find them at the moment), but I'll show you mine. I did it as a trifold. My river is ink, flowing onto the page.

Poets House: Sea Tale with Richard Lewis

Mikro attended a wonderful children's program at Poets House with the always amazing Richard Lewis. The children talked with Richard about play and imagination, imagined what it would be like inside a cloud and acted it out, pretended to be fish, watched a performance of Richard's Sea Tale, in which a crab teaches the world how to play, and then made crab assemblages and wrote about what the crab might have been thinking. Mikro composed a very simple song. And mama wrote a poem (and made a crab). Adults were encouraged to play, too!





Here's my little poem:

A Crab's Thoughts:

The sand prickles, tickles,
As I crawl along the beach.
Seagulls serenade me,
And I think that I might teach
The world to sing and dance
To the rhythm of the waves.
You've got to take a chance.
Play is for the brave.
You change the world a little bit
With the pattern of your thoughts.
So grab a pencil in your claws.
There are no rules, no laws.
Just play with words and let them swim,
Prose or poem, at your whim.
Have some fun; don't overthink!
Be like the octopus; just sling some ink.
~Chele

Poets House Class Visit 2

Our homeschool group had another class visit to Poets House this week, during the snowstorm, this time for kids from grades 2 to 5. Annie and Mike were wonderful with them, and there is something magical about listening to poetry while the world around you is transformed by softly falling snow.

Poets House Class Visit for K-2 Kids

On Wednesday, we took a tour of Poets House with our homeschool group. The kids got to visit the grown-up poetry library, look at the cool shadow boxes commemorating the annual fundraising walks over the Brooklyn Bridge, see the program room where readings happen, listen to rhyming poems, haiku and free verse, and explore the Children's Room.

Thank you, Mike and Annie, for an enjoyable visit!



Mikro was inspired by a book of winter acrostic poems, and the puppets and stuffed animals in the Children's Room, and dictated two acrostics:

L ong tail
I n his territory
O n his prey
N ot surrendering.

O ut of his shell
Y ellowy
S lime
T trapped no more
E scaped
R unning

(He kept pulling the Oyster puppet out of its shell and pretending it was going wandering..)

And now he is eagerly pouring over LEGO catalogs, and requesting one of the Atlantis sets (8061), which he has dubbed "Cephalopod Casino." I have *no* idea where he gets this stuff! He definitely has a thing for mollusks...

Poets House Workshop with Richard Lewis

On Saturday, Mikro and I visited Poets House for a workshop with poet/educator Richard Lewis called "Wind, Ice & Other Tremblings of Winter."

It was fantastic. Richard Lewis is warm and engaging, and paints beautiful images with his words. He started off with the story of a dream, using props and involving the kids. Each child was given a printed snowflake, a special magical "wind pencil", construction paper, chalk, and a view-frame to look at the snowflake more carefully. They could draw or write about their snowflake, Richard's dream, or their own dream. Each child was given a cloud foam mat to sit on in their own special place around the room. Mikro scampered under a stack of chairs, drew something (he lost his drawing before I got to see it), and wrote a short, simple poem:

Winter, snow, ice.
Kids play.

He was happy to stand up and share it.

I wrote a poem too, and tried to get away with having Mikro read it for me... But I ended up reading it myself. (How did a pair of introverts like me and Kev ever manage to produce an exuberant performer like Mikro, I wonder?)

Winter unwraps her gift of ice,
Wrapped in blankets of snow,
Dresses the trees in diamonds,
That dance as the cold wind blows.

Afterwards, Mikro was desperate to visit the Children's Reading Room, where there were all sorts of puppets to play with, and old fashioned typewriters to compose poems on, and a bunch of kids to do it with. I finally managed to get him to sit and read a book of poems about bugs. They were funny, and he really enjoyed the poems for two voices. And I had the opportunity to set up a couple of class visits to Poets House for our homeschool group for after the holidays...

Field Trip Fun

We've been on a bunch of field trips lately with our homeschool groups.

Tenement Museum:



Three! at Swiss Cottage Marionette Theater in Central Park:





Jigsaw Jones at the Tribecca Performing Arts Center (no photos allowed), followed by Rockefeller Park with friends, a craft at the park, and then Poet's House for some poems, and finally, the big silver slide at Tear Drop Park.