Poetry Challenge #231-Uncrank the Crank
Curmudgeon, crank, grump, sourpuss, bellyacher, grouse, crosspatch, malcontent, crab, grumbler, grump …Uncle Ted! Call um what you will, we all know one (maybe even are one…) the person who is chronically cranky, aka The Grouch!
Caroll Spinney was the original puppeteer behind Oscar and Big Bird:
Surprise! Today is Do a Grouch a Favor Day (Feb 16th). A day devoted to turning those grouchy frowns upside down.
Think of all the things you could do to try to make a grouchy person smile.
What might you give them?
What might you say to them?
What might you do for them—to them—to brighten their gloomy dispositions?
After his mom posted this Grumpy boy’s school photo it went viral. Click over to @today’smom for the rest of the story. But first…before you DO one thing more…
Poetry Challenge #231
Uncrank the Crank
Write a rhyming poem with things to try to make a grouch happy. Remember to smile!
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2000+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
Poetry Challenge #230-Pizza Party
Here’s all the excuse you need. . .
Give me a P!
Give me an I!
Give me a Z!
Give me another Z!
Give me an A!
What are we talking about? PIZZA!
Yep, February 9th is officially National Pizza Day. A day set aside specifically to honor-eat-make-eat-celebrate-eat-read about pizza. Let’s start with these fun pizza facts from Giovanni:
Every second, Americans order 350 slices of pizza.
Every day, Americans eat about 100 acres of pizza.
On average, each American eats 23 pounds of pizza every year. (and puts on 23#…)
The most popular pizza topping is pepperoni.
The world’s first pizza, largest pizza, longest pizza were all made in Italy. *
But, the real question and inspiration this prompt is: Who Wants Pizza???
Poetry Challenge #230
Pizza Party
Ding-Dong! Surprise! It’s a pizza party and you’re invited.
Begin by writing a shopping list of pizza toppings—at least 10!
Cut the list into bits—one word per bit.
Stir the bits, toss them into the air as one would a pizza crust, and then scoop them up and arrange them into a tasty pizza of a poem.
Feel free to add more or delete some, after all you’re the pizza chef!
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Let’s get this Pizza Party started!
*The world’s record for the largest round pizza ever made was set in Rome, Italy on Dec 13, 2012. How big was it? The pizza was so big, they named it Octavio! Octavio stretched more than 130 feet across, bigger than 1 ½ baseball fields and weighed 51, 257 pounds! It took 19,000 pounds of flour, 10,000 pounds of tomato sauce, 8800 pounds of mozzarella cheese, 1488 pounds of margarine, 551 pounds of rock salt, 220 pounds of lettuce, 55 pounds of vinegar and two full days to bake it. “The dough had to be baked in more than 5000 batches over a 48-hour period.”
The longest pizza ever made looked like a pizza sidewalk and was more than a mile long! In 2016, 250 pizza chefs from around the world gathered in Naples, Italy to construct a margherita pizza that stretched “1853.88 meters, which is approximately 6082.28 feet, or 1.15 miles.” It took more than 4400 pounds of flour, 3500 pounds of tomatoes, 4400 pounds of mozzarella, 200 liters of oil, and 66 pounds of basil to make the pizza.
Hungry for more? Here’s a round-up of pizza picture books from pocketofpreschool.com.
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2000+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
Poetry Challenge #229-Once More with Feeling!
Happy Groundhog Day aka Feb. 2nd, the day where folks all over the US and Canada look to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, and a groundhog named Phil, to tells us when winter will end.
Here’s the 4-1-1: The drama begins when Phil comes out of his burrow. If he sees his shadow, Phil will freak and scurry back into his den. If this happens, winter will last six more weeks. If he stays outside to play, spring is on the way!
I feel like I’ve watched this over and over and over . . .
Poetry Challenge #229
Once More With Feeling!
In a popular movie in the 1990’s, a weatherman got stuck repeating Groundhog Day. In honor of this year’s Groundhog Day, write a poem that gets stuck repeating a line.
Write two lines that rhyme and then write the repeating line (refrain).
Try to write at least a 9-line poem.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
In the mood for more Groundhog’s Day Lore? Click over to “11 Little Known Facts about Groundhog Day” published in Better Homes and Gardens (and don’t you dare say you’re read it all before.)
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2000+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
Poetry Challenge #228-Got My Greens
I took a parenting class once…once. I was a new mother far from family and needed help. The facilitator, Gordon, the father of six, doled out advice coated in candy, nuggets such as “perfectly normal.” And “Why would a kid want to eat green? Grass is green and dogs pee on it.”
“Why would a kid want to eat green? Grass is green and dogs pee on it.”
Happy National Green Juice Day! (celebrated every Jan 26th—definitely not Gordon’s idea.) According to National Day Calendar, Green Juice Day was declared in 2016 by Evolution Fresh, a juice making company (surprise surprise) “as a way to empower people to press ahead with their wellness resolutions by drinking a green juice.” Go Green Team are community organization working to conserve & preserve our planet from the grass up—both are good for you!
Poetry Challenge #228
Got My Greens
Take a moment—perhaps while blending up a tasty brew of kale, broccoli, spinach and honeydew…yum—and think green thoughts.
What images pop into your head when you imagine “green”? Is it trees in a shady glen? The Greenbay Packers? Dang, I forgot to take out the recycles? Green with envy, Greenbacks, or The Green Green Grass of Home ala Tom Jones?
Write a free verse poem inspired by your green imagining—with a hitch. Be free with your ideas and words, but . . . add structure to your poem by varying line lengths using a long/short or short/long pattern. The first line can be as long as you like, but the second can only have one or two words (or vice versa) and so on.
Think Green!
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
*Another “greene” worth celebrating—or not—Jan 26, 1875, George F. Greene of Kalamazoo, Michigan was granted a patent for an “electromagnetic dental tool,” the first electric drill designed for dental work.
Need green inspiration? Here are 2 favorite green picture books, Green by Laura Vaccaro Seeger and Green on Green by Dianne White and Felicita Sala.
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2000+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
Poetry Challenge #227-Popcorn
I’m missing movie popcorn: light, airy, crunchy, salty, buttery bites that grease up your dry skin. Mmmmm! And makes movie-watching oh so tasty!
The first single pops that grow faster and faster until clouds of popped corn flow over the sides of the pan.
Those red and white striped cardboard containers that pop into shape. Or the waxed bags filled until one more piece can’t balance. The smell! The taste!
Poetry Challenge #227
Movie Popcorn
Think of something you miss. Maybe it’s a favorite food. Maybe it’s summer since it’s January. Maybe it’s the sun on a cloudy day. Maybe it’s a friend or relative or pet.
Whatever it is, write an acrostic poem about it using the letters POPCORN as the first letters for your seven lines.
Be descriptive. Make your reader miss the thing too.
“Each acrostic poem has a topic idea running down the left side of the poem. Each letter in the topic word has a new thought that runs off the side from left to right and is relevant to the topic word. The topic word is typically the title as well.”—definition and examples on KidZonePoetry
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2000+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
Poetry Challenge #226-The Think System
How about those New Year Resolutions? Did you make them? Have you kept them so far? Gulp…
According to Discover Happy Habits poll of folks who make New Year’s resolutions:
After 1 week 75% are still successful in keeping it.
After 2 weeks, the number drops to 71%.
After 1 month, the number drops again to 64%.
After 6 months, 46% of people who made a resolution are still successful in keeping it.
Notice, all those statistics are about making and keeping resolution. No one ever says we can’t revise them…
Poetry Challenge #226
The Think System
In The Music Man, Dr. Harold Hill taught the “The Think System” to folks in River City. “Think!” he implored his band students “think” the notes and to imagine themselves playing. The Think System kept Harold out of the Hoosegow. Maybe it can work for us, too.
Poetry Challenge #226
The Think System
Choose one thing you’d like to change in your life. One dream you have for yourself. One hope for the future. It might be that New Year’s Resolution you half-hardheartedly made, or maybe something you haven’t dared put into words.
“Think” of a time, a place, a reality where that change, that dream, that hope is a fait accompli. You are doing it! Living it! Being there!
Write THAT poem. Write a poem based in that new reality! Maybe this clearer image of then will help us refine and keep those resolutions now.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2000+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
Poetry Challenge #225 This One's for the Birds
Click off those inside noises, pop your head outside and take a listen. Listen to the birds!
Happy Bird Day! (Jan 5th)* Different species of birds sing very different songs with different sounds and rhythms. Here are some birds and their songs (in human speak):
Chestnut-sided warbler: pleased, pleased, pleased to meet you
Whippoorwill: whip-poor-will
Chickadee: chick-a-dee-dee-dee
Common Yellowthroat: Witchity, witchity, witchity
Red-winged Blackbird: konklaree.
Ovenbird: Teacher, teacher, teacher
American Bittern: bloonk-a-doonk
Barred Owl: Who cooks for you?
Poetry Challenge #225
One For the Birds
Pick a bird from the list above (or find your own) and write a poem using the rhythm of that bird’s song. Your poem can be about a bird, or it could be the bird’s thoughts.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it! Tweet Tweet!
*Established in 2002, National Bird Day, established by Born Free USA with Avian Welfare Coalition, it’s a day to promote avian awareness—and the harsh reality that “nearly 12 percent of the world’s almost 10,000 bird species are in danger of extinction.” So . . . what can we do????
Plant 2/3rd for the Birds! What you grow in the garden can make a difference!” Here’s more at 234birds.org
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2000+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
Poetry Challenge #224 Ticking Along
Tick-Tock. Tick-Tock The clock is ticking, running fast. Tick-Tock Tick-Tock…
Yesterday was National Tick Tock Day (Dec. 29th). In a matter of hours this year that has ticked by sooooooo quickly will be over . . .
Have you done everything you need to do before the end of the year? Do it just now…but first:
Poetry Challenge #224
The Clock’s Ticking
Tick Tock.
Tick
Tick Tick
TALK
Write a poem with one or two words on each line. Listen to the rhythm. Listen to the sounds. Does it sound like a wristwatch or a grandfather clock.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
For inspiration, here are 11 songs with Time in the Title. Maybe you can write one of your own!
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face by Roberta Flack
Feels Like the First Time by Foreigner
Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper
I’ve Had the Time of My Life by David Cook
Time in a Bottle by Jim Croce
Love Me Two Times by The Doors
Any Time at All by the Beatles
Does Anybody Really Know What Time it is? by Chicago
Time is on my Side by The Rolling Stones
As Time Goes By sung by Jimmy Durante
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2000+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .