Emotion: Pictures, Music and Poems

Today I took photos of things around the playroom that represent different emotions to me. I then used my cello to show how I think these emotions would sound  through music. After, I wrote some poems about those emotions. The poetic pattern I followed was "a,b,a,b,c". - Jagoda
Below are the images and poems pieced together:

                                                                         ANGER

I'm really now annoyed

This page makes me mad

I hope it will soon be destroyed

This page is super bad

It's like the cello sliding off my knee

HAPPINESS

Puppies are fun

Puppies are cool

Yellow like the sun

They do not have to go to school

It's not fair!!!

BOREDOM

Maps are dull

Like history and geography

and my stupid doll

as well as my British tea

This poem puts me to sleep

Emotions

Over the weekend the girls and I all went to the same Pantomime. It was an interpretation of a documentary called "Mikrokosmos", about the life cycle of different insects and birds, but also of the tale "Thumbalina". It was a really interesting experience, and very kid friendly. Jagna's favourite part had to do with frogs which were jumping on bouncy balls. Jagoda's favourite part was the image of hands in the shape of a butterfly portrayed on a screen. My favourite was the butterfly dance, it was enchanting and the music was beautiful.

The play got me thinking about how ideas and stories can be conveyed without words, how emotions can be understood through actions and images. This gave me the idea for todays topic of emotions with the girls.
Together we thought of different images, words and actions that we think of when focusing on a specific emotion. We made a lot of different mind maps, a few in verbal discussions while jumping on the trampoline, and others on paper. Below is what we happened to write down:

Happiness: "different things make different people happy" - Jagna
-money- -pets- -toys- -a plant growing in a garden- -ice-cream- -yellow- -sunshine- - happy face- -flowers- -pastel colours-

- Actions that people do for others can cause happiness.
- The same situation could make one person happy and another sad (like pranks).

What makes you happy?
Jagna= bouncy balls, kids day, reading, movies, pets, decorated eggs, giving to others.
Jagoda= jumping on the trampoline, family and friends
Leah= sparkles and glitter, christmas lights, summertime, coffee, people who make me laugh.

Can you be happy all the time?
"Sometimes I am happy all the time" - Jagna
"If I was allowed to jump on the trampoline all the time without my toes freezing" Jagoda

Hate: -fighting--avocado--melted chocolate--the colour brown--anger--red--negativity-

Love: -hearts--pink--giving--selfless--goodness--friendship--kisses--teddy bears--cuddles--family

Proud: -playing the cello--playing the violin--knowing english--lions

Confusion: -tornado--gray--beige-head towel--question marks

Scared: -hide--danger--ghosts--darkness--eyes in the dark

**
Another possible activity inspired by emotions is for each person to pick an emotion and either draw pictures/paint/make a collage using images and words that describe or relate to the chosen emotion without using the actual word. **

Link to the pantomime: http://www.pantomima.wroc.pl/mikrokosmos/

Discussion Topics

                Working with two girls on creative reading and writing as ESL has been a lot of fun so far. Sometimes, though, it is good to just sit down and have interesting conversations without having to worry about writing everything down or turning everything into a tangible piece of work.

               Yesterday the girls father was showing a Nirvana video which sparked the youngest girl, Yagna's, interest in the topic of Kurt Cobain's death. I was happily surprised that A) she knew who Nirvana was, and B) that she knew all about his death. It lead to some interesting questions and conversations. 

Here is a jot note version of what was brought up and discussed if anyone is looking for some discussion topics or ideas :)

Kurt Cobain

- "Why would Kurt Cobain kill himself?" - disappointed in life, too many cruel people in the world, too much inequality in the world. 

           - Why would anyone kill themself? - 

            -Why do people who are bad seem to have so much power? GMO's,

 technology killing the environment. 

-"Why is the environment important?" and why do so many people with power ignore or do not understand the importance of our environment? (GREED!)

Yagna says "life would be better without cars and other technological stuff "

Birthdays

- Best birthday - what made it the best? Was is the year? The people? The events? The food? The gifts?

What made Yagna's 7th birthday the best was the good company, the location being inside a giant indoor play park, delicious cake shaped like a violin, and a sleep over.

- Why do some people not like birthdays? - age, money issues, some people don't like being the centre of attention

- Age is just a number. "Sometimes I am two, sometimes I am 9" - Yagna 

Verbal Stories

At the last part of our time together yesterday, Yagna and I turned off the lights and sat in the playroom in the dark and told scary stories. It was a lot of fun!

Here is one of the videos that was shown (two men playing Nirvana on the cello!)
It is very cool, check it out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gvEpa8SyVE

Pick an Object and GO!

A really good creative writing exercise, that is easy but fun, is to pick a random object in the room and write a short story, song, or poem about it. It can be any object, something as silly as a pencil or a book, or even something adventurous like a picture where you can make up a story to the image.

I asked Jagna to pick an object, any object, in the room and she chose a garbage bin. Then i told her to start creating a story about this garbage bin, making it a character. This is the final product:

The Life of a Garbage Bin By: Jagna

Once the garbage bin was VERY hungry. So, he said „hello” but then he realized he could not talk.

Then he saw a girl with a whole stack of rubbish. She put it all in the garbage bin. „Yum yum” thought the garbage bin because he couldn’t talk.

Everything ends up in the garbage.

Then he saw another girl with even more garbage. So, he ate it. Soon he was all full. Then he saw a girl that opened him and took all the garabge out, leaving him hungry again.

Soon, the garbage bin was SO hungry, but nobody came with garbage. Just one piece of paper that he chomped on quickly. But, to not be hungry, he just continued to chew it. He didn’t really know why he was doing it, but he started to chew it like a piece of chewing gum.

Soon, he chewed it all. Then, he saw something like the best thing ever. It was a big truck. There was so much garbage in it. The bin was tossed in with all the garbage. He started to quickly chomp on all the garbage he saw. He chomped it as quickly as a mouse goes to its hole.

He couldn’t stop eating, it was just loading into his mouth. So he kept on eating, but slower and slower.

Soon he ate the whole truck of rubbish. Then the truck went to a really fun place and put the bin into a special something. He doesn’t quite know what it is. But he ate more rubbish that was going with him.

Soon, there was only one thing: the bin.

Then, he went to the hottest place ever, and from the hotness, died.

Everyone saw it. So, they wrote a book about it.

Then, the bin had new life. He wasn’t a bin anymore, he was A HUMAN! He didn’t know why, but yeah, he was human. He was really small, but years later he is now reading the story about the same bin and realizes „oh, that was me!”

Make Your Own Legend

Jagoda decided to write her own legend. This is her creative process:

The Legend of Why Pumpkins Are Never Found in Fruit Baskets
Hero = Sir Banana - he hates the Evil Cucumber for killing his grandmother
Villain/Extraordinary Character = The Evil Cucumber

Setting = A basket of fruits and vegetables inside a house
Problem = The Evil Cucumber wants to kill Miss Pumpkin because he believes that she picked her nose and doesn't belong in the basket
Events = 1.The Evil Cucumber takes Miss Pumpkin to the edge of the basket to kill her
                2. Sir Banana hears Miss Pumpkin banging her head for help so he makes it his mission to rescue her
                3. Sir Banana can't go anywhere without his lucky pencil, but he lost his pencil so his lucky eraser would have to do.
                4. Sir Banana uses his eraser to erase the Evil Cucumber and saves Miss Pumpkin

Climax/Plot Twist: When Sir Banana rescues Miss Pumpkin, he realizes it's Mr. Pumpkin!
Resolution: Sir Banana is angry that Mr. Pumpkin lied about being Miss Pumpkin, and pushed him out of the basket.
Conclusion: Mr. Pumpkin ended up as pumpkin mush on the floor, ruining any possibility of the basket allowing pumpkins back into their community, and the humans of the house wondered how the pumpkin got there and where the cucumber disappeared to.

Note: Yagoda is creating a cartoon film of the legend as one of her Scratch projects, soon to be released at: scratch.mit.edu/users/Bear_Hugs/

Building A Story Sentence By Sentence

One day, partially in the play room and partially jumping on the trampoline, the girls and I decided to create a story that all three us could contribute to. The activity goes like this: one person starts the story with one sentence and then the next person adds on with another sentence. There are no rules as to what can happen in the story or where the story may lead. It becomes an interesting development! If you want to keep record of the story, nominate someone to be the scribe leader to write each sentence down :)
Here is our final product:

       Once upon a time there was a girl who jumped too high on the trampoline. She landed in a tree. from the tree she could see a kingdom not too far away.  The girls name is Eminee. She hates spinach but loves ice-cream. She heard that this kingdom was full of ice-cream. She wanted to jump to the castle, but accidentally jumped too high, landing on a planet in outer space. The planet was called "Spinach Planet". Her worst nightmare. Everywhere she looked there was spinach.
         Then she saw an ice-cream planet and she wanted to jump to it. She jumped too high again and landed in heaven. The angels said to her "get lost". This made Eminee very sad, all she wanted was some ice-cream.
         So, she jumped out of heaven and landed on the ice-cream planet. She took a big lick of ice-cream, when she realized... IT WAS SPINACH ICE-CREAM! "Eugh!" she said, then she went back to the spinach planet realizing that the spinach actually tasted like ice-cream! This was a very happy surprise for Eminee. She decided to stay on the spinach planet forever. But, she realized, there wasn't any air in space and it was very cold. That's when she knew she was dead and landed in heaven again. The same angels greeted her and said "Welcome to Heaven"

THE END.

Story Plot - Jagienka's Project

Our book club is a little different than the typical book club. For instance, we do not strictly stick to reading and discussing our novels, but rather we try to do our own creative work as well.
To begin, we went to the scholastic website where you can find topics on creative things to write about. Jagna chose the topic of writing about an airplane that moves to the North Pole. Instead of writing the story, I thought it would be a good idea to teach her about creating an outline to keep the story on track and to sort out exactly what events she would like to occur throughout the tale. This helps with brainstorming characters and their actions that will ultimately affect the events in the story. Here is what she came up with:

Airplane Plot. - Angry because he wrote down an "a" and not an "e" like he wanted --> Moves to the North Pole --> Meets a dragon --> The dragon challenges the airplane to a flying race --> While they were flying they saw a bird, a flying fish, and a hot air balloon who also wanted to race in the sky --> A green pea rolled by who couldn't fly but could jump across trees and clouds and also wanted to race --> The pea fell from a cloud but kept on rolling --> The green pea wins the race!

Afterwards she became bored with this specific plot, so we created a new one.

Main Character: King Sal Tin
Appearance: long, green, straight hair
Traits: nice but unhappy
Problem: he wanted to have curly blue hair
Event: the magic pebble broke

The Blue King – by Jagienka

Once upon a time, there was a King named King Salt Tin. He had long, green, straight hair. He was a nice king, but very unhappy. He was unhappy because he wanted to have curly blue hair.

Luckily he had a magic pebble. But one day when he was playing with the pebble, it fell and broke. So, he picked up a piece of the pebble, and asked for blue hair. Sadly the pebble didn't have much power left, it wasn't as strong as when it was whole. Therefore, instead of turning just his hair blue, his whole body turned blue. He was now a blue king!

Everyone was laughing and laughing at him. He got out the same piece of the pebble and asked "can you make my  hair orange-pink, so it's the same as my friends skin?" in hopes his hair would change along with his skin. But, only his hair changed. It was a disaster. So he asked the pebble again, "please turn my body into the same colour as my hair". The whole world turned this colour, but not the kings body.

The king was so unhappy that he killed himself, leaving the world orange-pink.

THE END.

Horrid Henry - Jagoda's Project

Horrid Henry's Chores Main Character: Horrid Henry. Other Characters: Mum, Dad, Perfect Peter. Main Event: Chores. Problem: Too many chores, no TV or pocket money. Twist: He pretended to do his chores (leaving the hoover on, dumping the rubbish, putting the colours and whites together in the laundry) Solution: Mum and Dad thought that he was actually unable to do his chores so he doesn't have to do them anymore. Horrid Henry's Haunted House Comparative Chart - Book vs Film similarities and differences

The Travelling Book Begins !

I am a 23 year old girl living in Poland for the year and I hangout with two lovely girls, Jagoda and Jagienka, a few times a week to work on some creative writing. The three of us have decided to create a blog about the book club we just started which we have named "The Travelling Book" because each of us love to travel as well as travelling through reading :) First work of business was researching how to start a book club. These are the steps that we decided on following: Step 1: Pick a book club name Step 2: Pick books Step 3: Think of creative activities Step 4: Decide on a meeting place Step 5: Create a space for your book (basket?) Things We Need - notebooks to write down things you want to remember while reading (document page numbers)and ask questions - pen/pencil - new English books Activity Ideas: - Book Review Posters - Who, What, When, Where, Why? - Reading - Comparison Circle Chart - Mind Map - Summary List - Illustration - Scratch Projects - Poems - Photography - Blogging (yes!) - Shoe Box Clay Display - Creative Recipe *** Come with discussion questions *** Book Club Rules 1. Don't Waste Time 2. No Distractions ie. Phone 3. No Eating While Reading (don't worry, there will be a snack break) 4. Must Pick One Activity (or continue working on an activity) 5. Always Do Something Creative 6. Trampoline Break Allowed!