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Sunday, November 4, 2012

Passport Workshop



I recently won a give-away copy of a wonderful book called "The Poetry Friday Anthology: Poems for the School Year with Connections to the Common Core" compiled by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong. It has many great poems, organized by grades and themes (K-5). There is one poem for every Friday of the school year and many creative suggestions for teachers about how to make poetry reading a regular part of your classroom. The book is published by Pomelo Books and is available here: http://poetryfridayanthology.blogspot.com/

I'm not a classroom teacher, but I do visit classrooms and libraries to share bookmaking with children. Yesterday, I had my first opportunity to share some poetry from the book. I gave a Passport-Journal bookmaking workshop at my local library. I shared some of my own travel journals with the children and some of my illustrated stories of journeys I have taken. Then I shared two poems from the book "No Way!" and "Family Vacation". Both poems are about what we take with us when we travel, and both poems were rhyming verse. The poems were a big hit! Then we made our passport books, decorated the covers and filled our books with words and pictures.

One boy was inspired to write a series of rhyming poems about pigs that fly in his book. Another boy was in the middle of his own journey and he made a book about his adventure. He was from New Jersey, but had no power at home due to hurricane Sandy, so his family travelled to MA to stay with relatives until the lights come back on. Matthew and I worked together to write and draw pictures to tell the story of his journey and the excitement of sleeping and eating and playing at his cousin's house.


One of my travel books about childhood trips to my Gramma's house in Canada




A page from my travel journal -- a fountain in a restaurant in Guatemala



We made a passport journal 
with a rubber-band and stick binding
that fits into a diamond pouch