Poetry Friday - Free for Play

     Poetry Friday is hosted by Matt Forrest Esenwine here at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme! Thanks, Matt for hosting and for celebrating those beautiful poems and poets in Lee's new Night Wishes!  

      I am thinking of all of you with the terrible fires and now flooding in our country, plus educators working so hard to do well for your students. It's a challenging time and I am hoping for better in less than two months!

     
          I moved into my 'now' home in 2012 and while I love the inside, the real reason that cinched my decision is this 100 years plus cottonwood in my side yard and all the trees surrounding me in the green space plus the library that is a block away. Those of you on social media with me probably recognize the tree because I really believe I might take more pictures of it than most anything, except for the grandchildren! Well, every few years, I need to have the arborists out, to check the tree's health and to trim some of the branches, those dead or dying and those hanging a little too low over the house. Yes, I have a motive for telling you this. The people who do this are wonderful and Tuesday, my yard and the outer garden one was covered with tree debris. They cleaned it up beautifully. But I am used to picking up sticks from this and other trees anyway and there were a few left. I started thinking about all the times my children and my grandchildren have played with sticks. I even remember a few times so long ago creating a structure with large sticks, then filling it up with snow for a snowball fight. They, thus my tree, is a treasure for more than one reason.

Celebrating Imagination

              I celebrate each Saturday with Ruth Ayres at Discover Play Build - Week number 97! There are many others who celebrate, too. Come join us!          Tweet at #CelebrateLu

         The week filled up with those nice things one savors, good connections, good meetings, good times with friends. But today I celebrate the amazing power of imagination. You know how much I love my grandchildren, also think they're very cute, just as you all think of your own children, family, including dogs. It was National Dog Day on Thursday, did you notice? The wonderful pictures on FB made me wish for a dog again.

          In watching the grand-girls yesterday, I had the chance to contemplate the power of play, am celebrating only one thing today, the power of imagination. There have been a number of articles recently about the importance of play, that too much is being taken away and replaced by worksheets/seatwork, in pre-school too!  I kept Imogene yesterday, and she played. We read, we went to the park and met a worm on the way, imagined what it might be like to live in the grass, all alone. What did it eat? Where did it go at night? At the park, Imi started some game in which she paused, said a nonsense rhyme, a shout, then ran up and down the play space again. I'm not sure what she was doing, but she was smiling all the time.