A Most Unique Mother's Day Gift

Happy Mother's Day to All!  I'm sure many of the readers of this blog are mothers, so I hope you are being celebrated by your family as royally as you deserve to be!  And, of course, I hope we are all honoring our own mothers and other women that have nurtured us to become who we are today.

My son and husband have been sweet to me today, so I've been having a lovely holiday.  But I have to share one of the presents my son gave me for Mother's Day.

Several days ago, as I was heading out on a rare solo outing to my allergist or something, my son asked me if the shirts in the drawer still fit me.  I wasn't paying that much attention because I was focused on getting together the stuff I needed to bring, but I assured him to leave them alone because they did fit.  The thing is, my son likes to wear big, baggy clothes, so he is always trying to steal shirts from me, my husband, and even his size XXXXL grandfather.  So I was mainly concerned that he wasn't going to abscond with one of the shirts that I like to wear.

What he did, however, was to take one of my shirts and decorate it with a Sharpie.  Here is what he wrote first:

Below that, he wrote a huge mind map of some of his favorite topics:

I thought it was such a sweet, cute, and funny present.  Definitely one of a kind--just like him!

He also did a small picture for me in art class, and bought a hand-made ceramic pot from one of the artists we visited on Friday on our First Friday gallery hop in Raleigh (which I've written about before).

We are going out soon for a meal at an Indian restaurant, which we've done for the past several Mother's Days.   But this shirt, which expresses in such a comic but profound way his understanding of himself and his appreciation of our relationship and the joys and challenges it can present, will make this Mother's Day that will stick out for me.  What greater gift could a mother get from a 12 year old boy than something like this?

Hanukkah Book Review: A Whole Nother Story by Dr. Cuthbert Soup

After all those uplifting books, I thought I would go for one that is just plain fun--A Whole Nother Story by Dr. Cuthbert Soup.  The name alone probably tips you off to the fact that this is going to be a pretty silly book.  Once you read the following bio about the author, you'll be sure of it:  Dr. Cuthbert Soup was born in Vienna, Austria, at the height of the Great Sausage Famine. At twenty-three he dropped out of high school and moved to New York City, where he landed a gig playing elevator music. He was soon fired, however, as his trombone kept smacking other people in the elevator. He is currently the founder and president of the National Center for Unsolicited Advice, where he has served as an unofficial advisor to CEOs and heads of state, and has given countless inspirational lectures to unsuspecting crowds. In his spare time he enjoys cajoling, sneering, and practicing the trombone in crowded areas. Dr. Soup currently resides in a semi-secret location somewhere in the United States. This is his first book.

 The story is kind of wacky, and involves such items that kids really enjoy as a time machine, a traveling circus, international spies, cowboys and pirates...and much, much more.  It sort of reminds me of a silly, tween-oriented comedic version of the old Mission Impossible television shows, where they would have all these scenes that didn't seem to relate to each other, and the characters kept taking on new personalities, but it would all come together at the end, just in time to keep the bad guys from doing whatever they were trying to do.  In the same way, there are so many characters that you lose track of them, but they all end up having a role in the book's conclusion.

There are some good themes in the book, such as the importance of family and, once again, the importance of accepting people who are different, but it is mostly a light and humorous read.  But the humor is mostly from wacky or unexpected events or characters, not the more various-unpleasant-bodily-functions jokes of many juvenile comedies.  The humor was perfect for my highly-right-brained son;  I read it first, and after I read just a couple of chapters, I knew he would love it--and he did!  It is an easy read for middle schoolers, and is probably appropriate for most upper elementary students as well.

Lesson Plan: Teaching Poetry with I Spy

I'm teaching a class right now on poetry, and found a great source for teaching a bunch of poetry concepts at once--those popular preschooler I Spy books by Jean Marzollo.   When I first brought them out, at least one of my students pronounced they were "boring"--as they could be for students way beyond the target audience.  But trying to create one of those collage/poems yourself is surprisingly complex.

First, there are the poems themselves.  They actually involve a number of poetic conventions, including:
1.  Since each two lines rhyme (that is, AABB rhyming pattern), they are examples of couplets (you know, those things that SHAKESPEARE was so fond of?)
2.  Marzollo's lines also follow a specific meter--what is technically called "dactrylic tetrameter."  It is a line that contains four phrases of three syllables with one beat or accent in each (example:  I spy a BEA-tle, a BA-gle, a BUN...see the four phrases of ONE two three, ONE two three, ONE two three, ONE (with pause for two three), just like a waltz?).
3.  Marzollo's rhymes also usually feature a good deal of alliteration, like my version above (of course, her rhymes are superior to the one I made up as an illustration).

So there is a more going on there with the poems than one might think.  But then try combining it with constructing a collage to match!  That is where things get really interesting.  When you do that, you are drawing from both your left brain (which is trying to remember all the rules) and your right brain (which is trying to construct an attractive and yet complex visual picture that will hide the items named in the poem).  It is also drawing on the language/word, rhythym/music, and visual/art functions of the brain--again, at the same time.  Marzollo advises writing the poem alongside the picture, because otherwise you may end up with a great collage of things that don't rhyme or alliterate, or else you may get a collage where the items in the poem are too dominant or obvious.

So they may seem like simple preschooler books...but like I said, try doing one yourself.  You'll end up with a much greater appreciation of how hard it is to create something that has so many different brain activities going on simultaneously--and I'm usually pretty good at multi-tasking and left brain/right brain coordination!  But it is also a lot of fun, and quite an impressive take-home item if you can pull it off successfully