A "Wandering" Slice

Time for the weekly Slice of Life at the Two Writing Teachers blog.  Tweet at #SOL14  
        It's great to read what others have to share from their lives. Come visit! Hope everyone is beginning a terrific week!

       My One Little Word is "wander", and while I haven't really been out of town, I have been trying a few new things. I am still weaving, but the new work at school has taken more of my time. I am traveling in a little while to visit my son, daughter-in-law and grandson, and I have plenty of terrific plans for the summer.      

It's Monday Reading!

         Thanks to Jen at Teach.Mentor.Texts and Ricki and Kellee at Unleashing Readers for hosting our Monday Reading community. Come along to find new books to read.
          Tweet at #IMWAYR

            This is a week of finishing things. In addition to those above, my book group completed The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, a Newbery to love and enjoy for sure. 

A Snicker of Magic – Natalie Lloyd

                 There are moments in this book that are marvelous, the exuberance of this young woman, Felicity Pickle, called the “poem catcher”, just trying to figure out who she is, what’s important in life, and where she really belongs. A big help along the way is a new friend, Jonah Pickett, a wonderfully thoughtful boy she first meets at school. Most of the answers are figured out with Jonah in Midnight Gulch, where she has lately landed with her mother and sister, to live for a while with her Aunt Cleo while her mother makes a little money so they can take off again. It seems Felicity’s mother is a wanderer, doomed because of a long ago curse on the Threadbare brothers, but we don’t discover the connections for a long time. There are numerous interesting connections in the book, some heartfelt, some a little crazy, but all the threads are straightened out satisfactorily. I loved when I got to the part about the “snickers of magic” and loved the magical qualities that appeared throughout. I was reading still another book these past two weeks, so wonder if my opinion wasn’t colored a bit while reading both. I should have read it faster perhaps, but found there were some slow parts, and quite a bit of repetition of the same desires and feelings from Felicity. In all, it was a book I will recommend, but it didn’t touch me as much as others have expressed they were touched.

Digilit-Collages

Margaret Simon has started a new meme titled Digilit Sunday. You can find it, and all who are linking up at Reflections On The Teche, Margaret's Blog. Thanks Margaret!

       If you read my posts at all, you know that I enjoy finding ways to do collages, especially when I'm sharing books. I like to share the book covers, too. I usually use Picasa, and have looked for other creative ways to make them. I want to share Kizoa today, an app that has quite a few ideas for creating, including adding music, different ways to make images stand out, ways to add text, etc. On this site one can also create slideshows and videos.  I can see that one could share a short piece of text, like a description, brief memoir, or poem with one image or more. Today I just grouped a few animal pictures, and added jungle sounds so you can see how it would work.

Don't forget to click on the speaker to start the sounds!

magical animals - Video Maker

Celebrating Goodness

        Thanks to Ruth Ayres, we Celebrate each week together! Tweet at CelebrateLu  Link up here!

             There is nothing better than a birthday party. Unfortunately it was supposed to be at the park near my house, and it turned out to be cold and windy. We crammed inside and had a great time anyway. Kids picnicked on a quilt in the living area, adults moved through the rest of the rooms. We did bundle up for a piñata outside! 

Ingrid celebrates being five with friends, and little sister Imi.

Monster cupcakes!

Gifts of Poetry

           Thanks to Katya Czaja of Write.Sketch.Repeat for hosting this first May Poetry Friday. Hopefully this is the start of something big-warmer springtime weather! 

             It was a wonderful April Poetry Month. So many wrote and invited others to write. I'm fearful of leaving someone out if I try to list all the April projects, but I read many, many poems and words about poems this past month. I needed an "April break" so I could keep up! Thank you everyone!

             One of the projects is one that has been dear to Jone MacCulloch (Deo Writer) for several years, and I was a lucky recipient of one of the Poetry Project poems created by students at her school.  Thanks to Michael C. for the lovely reminder of the beauty and mystery of snow leopards. Wouldn't it be awesome to really see one? Enlarge the picture to see that "tiny" leopard sketch.