Daffy-dils

During the cold grey doldrums of January I begin to splurge on supermarket daffodils to place on my coffee table. The little yellow blooms provide me with a little springtime magic and trick me into believing that flowering gardens aren’t too far away. I adore watching the tightly wrapped buds open slowly over the course of the week allowing their sunny faces to appear.

Each year I am also surprised by the sound originating from the blooms. As the light reaches the stems and they strain to open ever wider, their tissue paper covering stretches open with a slight wrinkling sound. The first time I heard this rattle it took a few days to hone in on the source of the crinkling noise but once I knew the origin I began to wait and listen with great intent to hear and see the blooms come to life.

As I sit and write this post I wait with great anticipation for the sounds of new life, yellow blooms breaking free from their cocoons. Hopefully these daffy-dils will not disappoint.

It’s Tuesday and I’m joining the writing community over at Two Writing Teachers. Take a peek and consider joining in.

The Better End of the Deal

The plans were made a few weeks back: take my oldest granddaughter for an overnight on Saturday so that potty training for the younger brother could happen more readily . I gladly accepted my piece of the task.

We worked our on 1000 piece puzzle. Surprisingly M. was able to put a few pieces into our Lion King scene.

We made a snowman complete with a carrot nose and rocks for the eyes. Too bad he fell over in the sun an hour later!

We baked “rainbow” cookies. OK, maybe they were grey-purple, but they tasted yummy regardless.

We even “notebooked” together. Look at that owl!

And on top of all of that we danced, we sang, we painted, and we even went sliding down the side yard. What a full twenty-four hours we shared together.

I will certainly help out with the toilet training like this again. Yes, I do believe I got the better end of the deal!

It’s Tuesday and I’m joining the writing community over at Two Writing Teachers with my slice of life story. Won’t you join in?

Writing My Way to My OLW 2020

I finally found my one little word, OLW, for 2020. It took some time and lots of processing, but I now can happily say I have it. I have had some inkling of an idea for about a month now, after seeing an email joking about the year 2020 being the year we would all have clear vision. It was then that I knew my one little word would be centered around vision. It churned around in my brain trying to make sense of it for a few weeks with no clear (no pun intended) progress. At the same time I picked up the challenge to notebook for 100 days. (See #100daysofnotebooking on Twitter with thanks to Michelle Haseltine)

The challenge began on January 1st. I used many of the first days of 2020 making lists of words that fit the bill. I explored words such as focus, clear, look, look-up, vision, and clarity. I even researched and wrote out quotes and definitions for the words. All of this writing was my way of processing the plethora of ideas that floated through my head. I know writing helps but my daily note booking truly allowed me to get to the heart of my word, FOCUS. I am left with a greater appreciation for the possibilities to use writing to approach problem solving.

With my success at using writing to process information, I have been churning around ideas to teach this skill set to my students. I realize I sometimes model this work when I brainstorming lists of ways we can solve a problem and use interactive writing to record the ideas. When we make a class pros and cons list I am guiding students to understand the use of writing to process a concern. Part of my process included drawing and sketching about the possibilities so why wouldn’t I encourage students to draw out their thoughts or feelings about a particular issue? I judge I could do more to model and use writing and drawing to help students process concerns, and problems. So I turn to this community. How have you, or your students used writing to process concerns or dilemmas?

I am joining the writing community over at Two Writing Teachers today and every Tuesday. Won’t you consider joining in?