Are you seeing the freckled red lily flower or the six-green-petaled flower?
Observing how you think - and feel - may give you interesting insights into looking and seeing, listening and hearing.
The short stories below are for different ages. Some are best read aloud to younger children. The stories are intended as jumping off places for developing projects and fueling discussions. Each story is available in a printer friendly format.
What holidays are celebrated where you live? By whom? Make a story or a play about this. If you make puppets for each of these characters, what would they look like? How would you expect them to act? What kind of story would you have if the characters did things you did not expect? How are animals also stereotyped by us? Does this matter?
What is a watershed? What do you know about the one in which you live? Tell its story using road maps, topographical maps, geologic maps, and even satellite images. You might want to make a Chinese-style scroll to illustrate your story. On a long roll of paper trace your waterway, inviting the viewer to view the scenes from slightly different perspectives as your eye travels the route. Let us see into buildings, under water, etc.
Make a collection of animal droppings from nearby, perhaps a park in your region. What words do scientists use for animal excretions? Because some animals carry diseases which humans can catch, you might want to make yours a collection of digital photographs. If you chose to make a scat collection, you will have to dry the specimens so they do not mold, and take measures to keep insects from eating the undigested matter. If you want to dissect the droppings to see what the animal ate, make yourself a pair of dissecting needles - stout pins mounted in wooden handles - so you do not touch the material as you work, and consider other precautionary sanitation measures.
What do humans do for outdoor recreation in your state? What are the environmental consequences of that use? Write a story or make pictures of that activity from the point of view of other organisms. What plants and animals do we treat as if they were just "things"? How do we make those decisions?
We all have different talents. What are yours? Which of your skills do you wish were better? Talk about how concentrating and practicing might help you and how you practice relaxing. How might you use your talents for the good of the world? Where do you live, in a city or in the country? How do you think environmental issues are different depending on where you live? Do people think differently about the environment based on where they live or what they do for a living? Using your style of skills, make a project which helps you be an ambassador of good will for your environment.
This story originally appeared in Redbook magazine as the featured work of fiction for the December issue of 1997. On the surface it deals with the tensions surrounding over-hyped holidays, but the story also suggests that nature is a healing force. What are the open space issues where you live? What could be done to make life better for plants, for animals, and for people where you are?
WordPaint is designed for young writers of about age ten and simultaneously for those who would mentor them. Writers, teachers, siblings, grandparents - this is for all of you who are willing to help spread the joy of making and appreciating poetry, but may not feel confident that you have the ability or training to do so. Join Marnie and Maine's recent Poet Laureate Baron Wormser, (with David Cappella, author of Teaching the Art of Poetry, perhaps most useful at the high school level) for this introductory level adventure.
Poem Pages for the Young
Once children's' language skills have matured beyond initial phonemic awareness, they are ready to move beyond rhyme. We never completely move beyond loving rhymes, whether they be simple and chiming, or subtle variations of sound patterns. We can also become aware of "rhymes" which are patterns of thought, references, repetitions, and echoes. We find the same effects in visual images even though we have not developed much of a vocabulary for them beyond the somewhat specialized ways graphic artists use terms. This past century has seen poetry change greatly with the Imagists showing us new possibilities in freer poetic forms. This collection of Marnie's poems and Ann's photographs is made especially with younger readers in mind.