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It's been a long while since I OIKed, and usually OIKing happens on Tuesdays, but this week we have a Friday Overheard in Kindergarten moment.  Actually we have more than one!  It's very important to maintain a sense of humor when the weeks are so irregular (our school system has not had a complete week of school since DECEMBER) and when the children are so irregular surprising.  Here are gems from yesterday which are evidence, I like to think, of children learning what I'm teaching:

K.MD.A.1Describe measurable attributes of objects, such as length or weight. Describe several measurable attributes of a single object:
"Miss Jenson, have you lost waist?"

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"Ms. Linney's baby is going to hatch soon!"


"It took me six months not to finish this!"

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Revision

It took me six months
a lot of weeks at least
to remember what
I wrote

It took me six months
since I was still five
to read my
old words

It took me six months
and again today
to add one more
describing word

It took me six months
not to finish this!
and now tomorrow
I'm finally done!

HM 2014
all rights reserved

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I must say that this poem reflects the sorry state of Writing Workshop in my classroom this year.  Something about our funky schedule and the particularities of my class has meant that many, many days our scanty writing time just gets swallowed up by difficult afternoon transitions and the need for a movement break and an unusually large number of kids who don't find a focusing joy in expressing themselves on paper.  I've always taught kids that Writing Workshop is "our favorite time of the day," the most relaxed, self-differentiated activity we do, but we haven't been able muster that habit this year. " It's taken me six months not to finish this..." and it's a mighty disappointment, to tell the truth.

AND YET!  How thrilling that on the same day we have finally arrived at the possibility of publishing our writing, copies of the Poetry Friday Anthology for Science also arrived at my door.  I was able to open the awesome Fourth Grade Student Edition and show my "Cicada Magic" poem right there in a real book, with my name and everything!  And THEY were thrilled and excited for me and for themselves, to actually reach an end point and publish their writing in a finished-looking form.  Deep breath; renewed commitment.

I believe that most regular Poetry Friday participants have poems in this anthology, the delights of which I haven't yet had time to fully savor--but if somehow you haven't heard, do go and look at the riches which are now available for you, your students, your children, your scientist friends, your anybody!

Join Margaret at Reflections on the Teche for PF goodness today and all weekend.

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Every year at our congregation there's a holiday party between the two services, which offers kids the chance to make cards for sick kids, donate mittens to the mitten tree, roll up little goodies in crepe paper streamers that become Joy Balls intended for parents' stockings.  But you know what they head for first, don't you?  It's the graham cracker "gingerbread" house station, which gets its own whole room.

Both kids took quite a bit of time and effort over theirs this year (Duncan's being thatched with red licorice whips and then further shingled with brown M&Ms. There has been a lot of damaging weather this year and you just can't be too careful in a time of climate change), and on the way home in the car ("MOM!  Would you mind driving a little more carefully!") they commented on the less designed, less elegant approach of some fellow architects. 

"Most of them end up looking like sheds more than houses!"

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all you did.
gumdropsskittlescandycanes--
your eyes say “Rush me to Insane.”

Heidi Mordhorst 2012
DRAFT


Postscript:  Duncan pronounces this "the best thing you've written in a long time.  It rhymes and it tells the ideas in a way I can comprehend!"  I guess my campaign in defense of sensitive free verse for children is not over.

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