Artists Week: Day Two

We weren't home much today. I had a haircut and we spent the day at the pool and gym. But between all of that fun, we focused on the "words" side of art ... poetry and creative writing. Above are a few attempts Abby and I took at creating a Cinquain (pronounced sin-cane) poem. We actually learned about this type of poem while reading a Junie B., First Grader book (of all things!) the other day.

1st line: title
2nd line: two words physically descibing the title
3rd line: three action words about the title
4th line: four words that express a thought or feeling about the title
5th line: a word that means the same thing as the title.

I was SO proud of Abby for doing this. She chose the topics (her favorite things) and came up with most of it herself. My cinquain was about Tyler! We talked about how poems don't always have to rhyme (our cinquains didn't) and we broke out the Shel Silverstein books Judy Underhill gave to us this spring. I don't know about you all, but "Where the Sidewalk Ends" and "A Light in the Attic" were favorites in our house. And it was so fun to see the kids enjoying the stories and illustrations as well. We listened to the poems on CD you gave us Judy (that was great!) and talked about lots of book-related things as we thumbed through the pages. We discussed the book's spine and the information it holds:We talked about the dedication page and the role of a "foreward" (you'll see why later in the week).When trying to locate the poems featured on the the CD Judy gave us, Abby used the index. We talked about how that is different than a Table of Contents. But either way, it's so good for her to have to look something up, then practice finding that page number quickly.Because Shel Silverstein's illustrations are so unique, over dinner, we talked about "artistic interpretation" and types of illustration. So, tomorrow we're going to work some more on a book we started writing and illustrating, we're going to paint a still life (flowers are cut and the fruit bowl is stocked!), and we're going to begin cutting words out of magazines to make sentences ... and potentially a story! Plus, I have food art ideas for a couple meals. Artists Week continues on Wednesday!