Every Wednesday our creative writing prompt challenges you to pick up your pen and indulge your author self!
It's been discovered that many ancient civilizations celebrated Leap Year on February 29th just like any other holiday. Somehow these ancient traditions were lost! Write a story that takes place on the day that happens just once every four years. Use your story to describe the celebration! What do people do? Wear? Sing? Dance? Give? Eat?
Share with us! Post your Leap Day descriptions in the comments section of our blog.
Front row: Sophia, Lauren, Rachel, Molly, Connor, Justice, Back row: Ethan, Sara
This Winter session, we have been using our pencils as a utensils and digging into food writing!
Read some of the delicious results:
Sarah
Recipe of Me
Ingredients: 1 lb. fashion, 4 cups swimmer, 2 1/2 lbs. wacky, 2 1/2 cups writer, 1 tbsp. clean-ness, 2 tsp. of tobiko, 2 cups of student coach, 1 lb. student council, 2 lb. of technology, 2 lb. of friendship, 20 lb. of smiley faces
Instructions:
Take the fashion, swimmer, technology and writer and put in a large bowl. Mix until purple or lavender. In a flat pan place friendship, clean-ness and wacky. Place in oven for an hour at 350 degrees. Let cool. Spread the first mixture onto the second. Sprinkle tobiko over it slowly. Store in freezer overnight.
Best served as a midnight snack with hot cocoa, never milk.
_______________________
Molly
Ode to Especial Surtido (a mexican bread)
You're sweet and gooey. I love you. I can't stop eating you, you warm, delicious thing. Your sweet smooth texture is like a spring flower opening up on a hot summer morning in Hawaii. I want you everywhere I go! Your warm, delicious smell, your texture melting in my mouth - you are like two pots of gold on each end of delight.
_____________________
Justice
Ode to Pancakes
Flip the pancake twice on the pan, the fire on at full heat, resting in oil, bubbling. As fast as I can, there's no way to stop the temptation that I have in my mind, sizzling in my face with no end. The smell is so tempting...almost ready to eat...as flat as a piece of paper, getting fatter and fatter as fast as possible, preparing for its fatal death, but loving it's life while it can.
The pancake sitting on a plate waiting for the syrup to cool and the butter to melt...the pancake looking at me with a frown. I told him I was going to eat him already so flip the frown upside down. Fluffy brown; just the way I like it.
1, 2, 3 - Prepare for death! Munch, munch, munch, gulp, all done...kind of waiting for the right moment to say, "I love you pancake."
_____________________
Rachel
Ode to Caprese Salad
As the soft mozarella with a delicious juicy tomato underneath, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper, meets your tongue your taste buds go to a different world where everything is perfect.
Then you eat another tomato with mozarella, olive oil, salt and pepper and then you eat another, and another and another until there are no more left.
After you've eaten all of them you have to go back to a world where not everything is perfect.
Our creative writing challenge to you is to look at the image we post below and see where it may take you and your pen. Wake up your imagination and see where this takes you!
Feel free to share anything spurred on by this week's photo in the Comment section below!
I am from eating cheeseburgers. I am from going to school for the first time. I am from a fossil. I am from a sea cookie. I am from going to my Grandma's house. I am from clay materials. I am from a piece of mango.
-Pearce, Joaquin Miller
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Exercise: Secrets on the Line
Once there was a dark-haired boy named Rudolph. He was a really nice boy with bright blue eyes. He was very poor and all by himself, and he had a secret: to survive he had to steal small things from stores. He really hated it, but he had no choice. If he needed clothes, he would cut off the alarm and hide them under his pants. If he needed food, he would eat it at the store when no one was looking. If he needed to use the bathroom, he went to Starbucks.
One day, Rudolph walked into a dark storage room in the back of his favorite store. A light bulb went on, and behind him he heard the store owner say, "You're going to jail, you shoplifter!"
"No," Rudolph said, "Please let me go. I'm an orphan."
"Well," said the store owner, "If you're an orphan, then I'll adopt you."
-Luke, Joaquin Miller
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Exercise: Secret Recipes
Secret Recipe for Epically Awesome Beast Mode
Ingredients: One television, any variety One video game console
Instructions: Plug console into television. Turn on television. Use controller (not included) to turn on console. Result? Home theater!
Side Effects: Awesomeness, possibility of seizure, tendency to not get homework done.
-Alex, Joaquin Miller
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Exercise: Secrets on the Line
My story begins like this. Every night, someone named Dr. Woods climbed out of his window, went to the forest, and hung out with his best friends. I lived right next door to Dr. Woods, and one night I saw a tree in the forest move. I thought it was my imagination, but then it walked up to my front door and rang the doorbell. I heard the door open, and Dr. Woods came into my house. I hid in the darkness of my room, but soon I heard a voice behind me: "Looking for someone?" it said. I was paralyzed.
Our creative writing challenge to you is to look at the image we post below and see where it may take you and your pen. Wake up your imagination and see where this takes you!
Feel free to share anything spurred on by this week's photo in the Comment section below!
Ivan is the One and Only gorilla, a sideshow attraction at an economically-struggling shopping mall. He lives in a cage, and is content to sit and eat and make art and be ogled by the dwindling number of visitors on the other side of the glass. But when the mall brings in a baby elephant to increase business, Ivan promises that this new addition will not live out her life in a cage, to die behind bars like her predecessor. Using his art and his newly found determination, Ivan will do anything to make her life as happy as it ought to be.
Quality: 5 stars out of 5
Every once in a while there comes a book that is so pure, so genuine, it feels as if you are reading a cloud. The characters are haunting, and the story is heartbreakingly uplifting. I will never forget this book. While bringing attention to the horrors animals face in poaching and the extraction from their natural habitats to the zoos and circuses we take for granted, this story weaves a tale of friendship, love, courage and loyalty so deep that you can feel it in your bones. It is truly a gem, and one of the most touching and unforgettable books I have ever read.
I love the cover. I think that a photograph of a gorilla's hand holding a crayon or covered in paint would also work, or maybe a picture of a gorilla holding an elephant's trunk in friendship. But the magical quality in the painting and the companionship demonstrated by their back-to-back positions makes it really heartwarming.
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Clare Schuett is 16 and lives in Sebastopol California. She is a lover of books and a voracious reader. She reviews YA books, prior to their publication, for the American Library Association. We have the privilege of posting her reviews on our blog.
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Want to know more? Visit: http://www.amazon.com/One-Only-Ivan-Katherine-Applegate/dp/0061992259
Our creative writing challenge to you is to look at the image we post below and see where it may take you and your pen. Wake up your imagination and see where this takes you!
Feel free to share anything spurred on by this week's photo in the Comment section below!
June 18th - June 22nd (1 week) M-F, 9:00-12:15, Kids ages 8 - 12
We're going to re-imagine beloved fairytales using food as a central theme. Of course, to do that we'll be eating food and learning to use metaphor, simile and other writing tools to write about all things edible.
Location: 18 Reasons, 3674 18th Street, in the Misson District
Cost: $250 per camper, 10% discount to children of 18 Reasons members, 10% off for each sibling registrant. Tuition includes a journal and pen and snacks.
Parents who want to register for Piedmont camps can do so through their online catalogue at http://www.ci.piedmont.ca.us/recreation/catalog.shtml * Tuition includes a journal and pen, snacks and for full day camps, art materials.
* Please note, the catalogue prices are not correct. When you click into their registration software you'll see the correct prices.
Do you have an appetite for writing? Then come join us for Peanut Butter and the Pen – our unique food writing class for kids. We'll taste food, read excerpts from some of literature's greatest writing in praise of food, and explore tantalizing ways to describe all things edible. Then we'll write love letters to our favorite foods, food mysteries and more!
What is to become of the hand written letter? We’ll practice the (almost lost) art of letter writing, make mail art, have fun with rubber-stamping and then mail our creations to strange and distant lands.
Come in with a notebook, a pencil and your imagination and leave with an original children’s book. We’ll learn the building blocks for creating an engaging story for younger readers (K – 2), and after exploring different illustration techniques, create original illustrations.
Brushing up on writing mechanics should never be boring! Take our Dangling Modifier Dare and join our Participle Parade. Our take on commas and conjunctions will tickle your funny bone and leave you wanting more!
Using art and creative writing we'll explore flight – flights of fancy, the flight of the bumble bee, the first airplane flight, space flight, the flight of Cupid’s arrow, and more. Come fly with us!
What is our camp day like?
Half day camps:
We'll spend each day with paper and pencil, immersing ourselves in words centered around the camp theme. Our writing activities are designed to spark kids' imaginations and include solo and collaborative writing projects. Camp culminates in a reading and art exhibit for parents and friends at the end of the week. Plus, we'll read writing by well-known authors, edit, painting, snack, erase, gab, read stories, as well as admire and share our work.
Full day camps:
We'll spend half of each day with paper and pencil, immersing ourselves in words centered around the camp theme. Our writing activities are designed to spark kids' imaginations and include solo and collaborative writing projects. The other half of the day we'll interpret that same theme using visual art, exploring a range of mediums. Camp culminates in a reading and art exhibit for parents and friends at the end of the week.
Plus, we'll read writing by well-known authors, look at art by famous artists and have fun drawing, writing, editing, painting, snacking, erasing, gabbing, reading stories, as well as admiring and sharing our work.
Teaching art for our full day camps this summer are two artists, Angela Baker, and Laurie Croft.
Angela has a Bachelor of Fine Art from the Columbus College of Art and Design, with an emphasis in painting and drawing. Since 2001 Angela has been teaching both in-school and after school visual art classes with established San Francisco arts organizations such as Leap…imagination in Learning, ArtSpan and the San Francisco Arts Education Project. Angela is also an exhibiting painter whose work has been showcased in group and solo shows in Budapest, San Francisco and New York.
Laurie is an artist and art instructor at MOCHA (Museum of Children’s Art in Oakland) teaching classroom field trips and off-site Community Workshops curriculum and craft projects based on California Visual Arts standards. She was the designer of Flying Colors Ceramics sold nationally and commissioned by the Guggenheim Museum to produce jewelry based on their permanent collection. Laurie has a BFA in painting from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio and is currently taking Early Childhood Development classes at Merritt College.
Creative writing will be taught by our wonderful instructors. Their bios are here.
Our creative writing challenge to you is to look at the image we post below and see where it may take you and your pen. Wake up your imagination and see where this takes you!
Feel free to share anything spurred on by this week's photo in the Comment section below!
