Poetry Challenge #199-Strawberry Sundae Sunday aka One Scoop or Two?
While the proper spelling might be debatable: Sundae vs Sunday; the exact recipe might vary: One scoop or two? Cherry or no cherry on top?; and its origin is up for dispute: Two Rivers, Wisconsin in 1881 or Ithaca, New York in 1892; one thing is for certain:
Ice cream with crushed strawberries & a dollop of cream tastes like summertime!
Poetry Challenge #199
Strawberry Sundae Sunday—One Scoop or Two?
Write a poem inspired by a Strawberry Sunday or Strawberry Sundae—ending and meaning of the word “Sunday/ae” is up to you.
Include sensory words and details to make your poem taste as good as it sounds.
Close your eyes and repeat after me: Strawberry Sunday, Strawberry Sundae…
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
And, since it’s National Strawberry Sundae Day (July 7th) treat yourself! Click on the image below for DelishKids Strawberry Bites recipe!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge more than 1900 days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
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All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
Poetry Challenge #198-More Stars! More Wishes!
Look! Up in the sky! It’s a . . .
“Supercat” by Cristina Borobia
No… It’s a meteor shower. When you wish upon a star . . . faster! More stars! More wishes—
Meteor showers—the kind that light up the sky with fast moving bits of light also known as shooting stars—are the result of debris shed by passing comets. The comets passed 100-200 years ago and left a trail of dirt and rocks and ice particles behind. When this debris—some the size of a grain of sand—drift into Earth’s orbit, the burst into flame in a display similar to fireworks.
Poetry Challenge #198
Meteor Stars! More Wishes!
For today’s poem, write a shape poem about meteors*, shooting stars, comets, orbits, or fireworks. Make your poem look like its topic.
When it gets dark, be sure to get outside and watch for evidence of a comet’s passing.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
*Why today? Because June 30th is National Meteor Watch Day!
For more information about meteors and meteor showers and when to see them best here’s a stellar article from NYT Science.
Look up! and . . . Make a Wish!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge more than 4 years ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
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Poetry Challenge #197-In The Pink?
Are you in the pink? Hope so? If you’re feeling blue, seeing red, a little green around the gills (or green with envy), time to pull out the paint pallet and mix it up for today is National Pink Day! Yep! June 23rd is set aside as a day to bust out the pink!
Legend has it that sometime in the last 17th century (back, evidently, when the world was all black, white, and primary colors), someone waxing lyrical (or frustrated with the English language), pointed to a dianthus flower named “pink” and said “that color.” Shazaam! The color “pink” was born.
From there, Pink, ever vibrant, varied, nuanced a word as it is a color, went on to mean so much more!
Pink in Roses:
Dark Pink Roses: If you want to express appreciation, gratitude, or to say thank you.
Medium Pink Roses: If you have a first love, want to congratulate someone or want to cheer up a friend who’s grieving or healing.
Light Pink Roses: If you want to show gentleness and admiration.
Poetry Challenge #197
In the Pink
Because “pink” is much too much for only one option, for this prompt choose your own pink to explore in poem. Here are some options. Surely one will tickle you, well…pink!
· Explore one or more meanings of the word pink in a poem.
· Write a about a day you felt “in the pink” what did you do? Who were you with? Where did you go?
· List all the shades of pink you can and blend them into a poem.
· Describe a pink person, place or thing.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just get with the pink!
Puffed up proudly pink now that you’ve created your poem? Here are ways the National Pink Day Calendar suggests celebrating: #NationalPinkDay
Use pink in a sentence.
Plant or give some pink flowers.
Dye your eyebrows pink.
Color or paint something pink.
Earn a pink ribbon by donating to Breast Cancer Awareness!
Feeling in the Pink Playlist:
“Theme from the Pink Panther” of course! Take it away Henry Mancini!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge more than 4 years ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl): SUBSCRIBE TO THE FISHBOWL
Poetry Challenge #196-Simple Poem of Freedom
Juneteenth! Jubilee Day! Liberty Day! Freedom Day! is this Saturday, June 19th. That’s the official day marking the end of slavery in Texas and the United States. About 2 months after the end of the Civil War, on June 19th, 1865, U.S. General Gordon Granger march into Galveston, Texas and read General Orders No. 3:
The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.
Saying-proclaiming-making laws—declaring slaves free—is not the same as doing it. As U.S. History since June 19, 1985 has shown, we the people have repeatedly, in myriad ways—social, fiscal, political, physical—tried to maintain slavery. Finally, now—again?—awareness that the U.S. Constitution’s promise to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity is resulting in active change in support of all peoples’ rights. Let’s join the Juneteenth Celebration with, to paraphrase Bobby Darin , a simple poem for freedom.
Poetry Challenge #196
Poem of Freedom
In celebration of Juneteenth, write a poem of freedom. It might be a prayer, a hope, a promise, but, in the spirit of Bobby Darin’s Simple Song of Freedom, try writing it in the form of a chant or song. To do that write:
A rhythmic stanza of at least 4 lines (rhyming or not),
A rhyming refrain (of at least 2 lines)
Another rhythmic stanza in the form of the first.
Continue the pattern: stanza-refrain-stanza as long as you’d like. End your poem of freedom with the refrain or a riff on the refrain.
Let Freedom—for all—ring!
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge more than 4 years ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl): SUBSCRIBE TO THE FISHBOWL
Poetry Challenge #194-Make Mine Rocky Road
It’s June! Summertime searches for the best ice cream have begun!
Today we’re honoring Rocky Road ice cream.* This smooth chocolate ice cream mixed with nuts & marshmallow. Is your mouth watering?
Mix up your own rocky road ice cream blend and sneak in whatever you like—we do!
Poetry Challenge #194
Make Mine Rocky Road
While on the subject of ice cream, what do you like better—soft serve or hard? What’s your favorite kind? What’s the strangest flavor you’ve seen?
For this poem, pick a flavor. Think about what ingredients are in your ice cream. Make a list of 5 or more words associated with that flavor—one word on each line. (Be sure to put the flavor first.) Use the words in your list as the first word in each line of a poem.
Here’s Cindy’s list for Rocky Road. You can use this list or make your own to write a poem:
Rocky
Road
chocolate
almond
mini
marshmallow
Hurry! You have 7 minutes before it melts!
*Why today? Because June 2nd is National Rocky Road Day. William Dreyer of Dreyer’s Ice Cream fame, is credited with blending his partner Joseph Edy’s chocolate confection of chopped nuts & marshmallow with his ice cream to create a new flavor sometime in the late 1920s. And while Americans claim the name Rocky Road was given “to bring smiles to faces during the Great Depression,” Australian’s claim it’s named for the Rocky Road gold hunters traveled. Since Australia’s version of Rocky Road candy dates back to 1863, they win. BTW: Rocky Road candy is said to have been created by George Ferrin as a way to sell confections damaged during the long trip from Europe—he mixed the broken candied fruits, marshmallows, etc with locally-grown nuts and cheap chocolate to disguise the flavour.”
George Ferrin’s “Rocky Road” would have looked like this…Yum!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge more than 4 years ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl): SUBSCRIBE TO THE FISHBOWL
Poetry Challenge #193-Happy Paper Airplane Day!
When was the last time you flew? Probably since the first soaring bird-spotting, people have been trying to fly, by fashioning wax-coated wings and turning themselves into birds and building ginormous $23 million dollar quackers like the “Spruce Goose” a troop carrier with a wingspan of 320 feet—longer than a football field—made of wood laminated with plastic and covered in fabric and designed to carry more than 700 soldiers, or in its purest form with a single sheet of paper with imagination folded in!
Poetry Challenge #193
Happy Paper Airplane Day!
Because someone needed a reason, today, May 26th, is National Paper Airplane Day. A day during which we are, each of us, honor-bound to create a paper airplane. Let’s do it!
For this prompt, shove devices aside and take up a sheet of paper. Imagine yourself folding that paper into an airplane—resist the urge to make one (for now). When its finished imagine yourself climbing aboard and soaring away!
What’s your destination? Who’s with you? What’s it feel like to fly?
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Ready! Set! Write!
When your finished, fold your poem into a paper airplane and send it into the world! Double-Dog Dare YOU!
If you need a paper airplane refresher, click on the image for step-by-steps to create the BAT X.3
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge more than 4 years ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl): SUBSCRIBE TO THE FISHBOWL
Poetry Challenge #192-Mix-Blend-Whirrrr-Slurp!
It’s National Juice Slushie Day! Yes, it really is a thing, celebrated annually on the 3rd Wednesday in May (May 18, 2021). And why not?
What do you get if you put juice and ice in a blender? A Slushie! Orange, cranberry, grape, lemon, lime, the list is open to anything you want to add. Or you could mix them up and see what you get. According to the National Day Calendar, slushies have been around as long as snow!
I hear McDonald’s has teamed up with Minute Maid to introduce a watermelon/strawberry slushie this summer. Can you say Brain Freeze?!!!
Poetry Challenge #`192
Mix-Blend-Whirrrr-Slurp!
Pick two (or three if you dare. Come on! You dare!) poems that are close to the same length. Either your own or other poet(s) poems. Now add them to the poem blender, one line at a time from each.
Read over your new poem.
Add more words (berries) if necessary to make the meaning clear. Cut words that are unnecessary. Turn on the blender and shift lines to make it even better.
Then read and enjoy your Poem Slushie aloud!
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge more than 4 years ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl): SUBSCRIBE TO THE FISHBOWL
Poetry Challenge #191--Sunglasses Mandatory
Audrey Hepburn made shades chic,
Tom Cruise’s Top Gun Ray Bans made them cool,
Grandboy Bennett made them cooler . . .
Tracy Ulman’s cover of the Sunglasses Song made them camp…
Sunglasses/ooh-ooh/to hide behind
Sunglasses/ ooh-ooh /to cry behind
Sunglasses/ ooh-ooh/ die behind
Twelfth Century inventors made sunglasses of smoked glass expressly for Chinese judges to wear so no one could see where they were looking or what they were thinking.
Poetry Challenge #191
Sunglasses Mandatory
Who’s that behind those Foster Grants? asked the iconic ad campaign. Who indeed? Sunglasses—polarized, mirrored, UV protected, rose-tinted—protect us from the harsh glare of the sun, reality…and so much more.
For this prompt write a sunglasses poem riffing off the 1984 Corey Hart hit in which he sang that he wore his
sunglass as night so I can/so I can. . .
Why? When? Where do you wear those sunglasses? What can you do with them on? What happens when you take them off?
For extra credit, write one line with sunglasses on, the next with glasses off, glasses on, glasses off.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
Dylan in shades, just for laughs!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge more than 4 years ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl): SUBSCRIBE TO THE FISHBOWL