Prompt 4: Halloween

Preschool children:  

Halloween:  Print this picture for your child to color and discuss with you.  One sentence lets you record your child’s thoughts at this age and has a line for you to share your own thoughts with your child.

School agers: 

Which part of Halloween do you look forward to?  Print this page and use it to write about your Halloween.

Teens/Adults:

Essay prompt: Francisco de Goya, famous painter of monsters, wrote "Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels" (see http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/goyas-the-sleep-of-reason-produces-monsters.html for the etching and more information).  Do you share Goya's belief that reason alone is not enough to produce invention?  Explain.

Poetry prompt:  While the romantic poets often used the lyric (metered, rhyming poetry which evokes the musical to exploit the emotional) to express love (both romantic and other), it was also used to evoke horror and other emotions.  Try writing a lyric poem to express an emotion other than love.

Lifestory prompt: Describe a Halloween in your past.

If you would like (and if it is okay with your parent or guardian), you can sign a submission form and return the form and your writing to the library.  Stories will be posted together on this blog beginning November 29^th.  The stories will be publishes as a book in the spring of 2014.

Prompt 3: Being Sick

Preschool children:  

Being sick:  Print this picture for your child to color and discuss with you.  One sentence lets you record your child’s thoughts at this age and has a line for you to share your own thoughts with your child.

School agers: 

What happens when you're sick?  What kind of sickness do you usually get?  Who takes care of you?  What kind of medicine do you take?  Print this page and use it to tell us your story.

Teens/Adults:

Essay prompt:  Famous French author Guy de Maupassant wrote, “A sick thought can devour the body's flesh more than fever or consumption.”  Maupassant is not alone in treating thoughts as germs which must be contained, and many societies have exiled (essentially quarantined) those whose thoughts disagree with the ideas of the majority.  Are dissenting thoughts dangerous?  How should dissenters be managed?  Discuss.

Poetry prompt:  We all know what it sounds like to be sick.  Capitalize on this knowledge by writing a poem using onomatopoeia to illustrate the sounds of sickness.

 Lifestory prompt: Tell the story of a childhood illness in your life.  OR Tell the story of an illness that changed your life.

If you would like (and if it is okay with your parent or guardian), you can sign a submission form and return the form and your writing to the library.  Stories will be posted together on this blog beginning November 29^th.  The stories will be publishes as a book in the spring of 2014.

Share a Pair of Stories Prompt 2: Favorite Books

Preschool children:  

Favorite Books:  Print this picture for your child to color and discuss with you.  One sentence lets you record your child’s thoughts at this age and has a line for you to share your own thoughts with your child.

School agers: 

What is a story that meant something special to you?  Print this page and use it to write about reading an incredible book.

Teens/Adults:

Essay prompt: Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote, "The limits of my language means the limits of my world."  Do you agree that our world is limited by our language?  Explain with vivid examples.

Poetry prompt:  A found poem is one composed of phrases taken from other sources.  Using your favorite literature as a touchstone, compose a found poem.

Lifestory prompt: Vividly write a story about how books have impacted your life.

If you would like (and if it is okay with your parent or guardian), you can sign a submission form and return the form and your writing to the library.  Stories will be posted together on this blog beginning November 29^th.  The stories will be publishes as a book in the spring of 2014.

Share a Pair of Stories: Prompt 1

Preschool children:  

Feelings:  Print this picture for your child to color and discuss with you.  One sentence lets you record your child’s thoughts at this age and has a line for you to share your own thoughts with your child.

School agers: 

Emoticons!  Print this page and use it to write a story about a time you felt something-est, happiest, saddest, strongest, loneliest, silliest, etc.

Teens/Adults:

Essay prompt: The famous German philosopher, Friedrich, Nietszche, wrote:

[T]he scientific spirit of the investigator is both helped and supplemented by the latter’s emotions and personality, and the divorce of all emotionalism and individual temperament from science is a fatal step towards sterility.

Today, most people equate subjectivity with emotion and objectivity with science.  In what ways does science depend on emotion?

Poetry prompt:  Write a poem about something abstract: depression, joy, glory, freedom, etc.  Consider using personification in which you treat the concept as a person.

Lifestory prompt 1: What is one of your -est (happiest, saddest, loneliest, etc.) days?  Show us what happened and help us feel it, too.

If you would like (and if it is okay with your parent or guardian), you can sign a submission form and return the form and your writing to the library.  Stories will be posted together on this blog beginning November 25^th.  The stories will be publishes as a book in the spring of 2014.

There's Nothing Like Buried Treasure

Preschool children: 

Buried treasure:  Print this picture for your child to color and discuss with you.  One sentence lets you record your child’s thoughts at this age and has a line for you to share your own thoughts with your child.

School agers: 

There’s nothing like digging something up!  Print this page and use it to write a story about something you have buried, treasure you would like to hunt, or something you would like to mine.

Teens/Adults:

Essay prompt:  We mine the depths of the earth to retrieve diamonds—treasures formed by heat and pressure.  What types of treasure are built in your own character through adverse conditions?

Poetry prompt:  Using the ideas that structures are necessary for safe mining, write an OULIPO, or mathematically-structured poem.  Common OULIPOs would include poems whose lines are successively longer (The first line is one word long, the next two, the next three, etc.) or shorter (like the previous example in reverse).

Lifestory prompt 1:  (Monday) There’s nothing like digging.  Tell a story about something you literally buried or dug up.

 
If you would like (and if it is okay with your parent or guardian), you can sign a submission form and return the form and your writing to the library.  Stories will be posted together on this blog beginning in November and in a book in the spring of 2014.

There's Nothing Like an Earthworm 2

Bonus Friday Prompt:

There’s nothing like good bait.  We all know that the early bird catches the worm, but a plump worm can catch us a big fish!  Tell a story of a real or metaphorical tidbit that helped you catch the fish you were after.

If you would like (and if it is okay with your parent or guardian), you can sign a submission form and return the form and your writing to the library.  Stories will be posted together on this blog beginning in November and in a book in the spring of 2014. 

 

There's Nothing Like an Earthworm

Preschool children: 

Worms:  Print this picture for your child to color and discuss with you.  One sentence lets you record your child’s thoughts at this age and has a line for you to share your own thoughts with your child.

School agers: 

There’s nothing like worms.  Print this page and use it to write a story describing worms.  Where have you seen them?  How do they feel?  How do they smell?

Teens/Adults:

Essay prompt:  The humble worm is often looked down on (consider the phrase “lowly as a worm”), yet much of our life would be impossible without its role in aerating the soil and helping to decompose waste.  Give an example of a humble, routine activity that you perform in your daily life that enables you to do great things.

Poetry prompt:  Write a snaking tanka (a 31-syllable Japanese poetic which examines an image and then—like the second half of the worm—turns to examine the speaker’s response to the image) to examine your thoughts on a worm or snake.  Examples of tankas may be found at http://www.tankasociety.com/.

Lifestory prompt 1:  (Monday) There’s nothing like the smell of worms.  Living in rainy Western Pennsylvania, there’s no way to avoid the worms on the sidewalk after the rain.  What is your response to them?

If you would like (and if it is okay with your parent or guardian), you can sign a submission form and return the form and your writing to the library.  Stories will be posted together on this blog beginning in November and in a book in the spring of 2014.