Poetry Challenge #185-Color Our World
Crayola Crayons! Close your eyes, take a deep breath: Smell them?
My friends and I swore we could smell the difference between colors.* Remember breaking them? And/or trying to color so softly as to not break them? And when we did, which we always did, holding the broken ends together while gingerly easing the paper down to splint the break?
So many uses for broken crayons. Who knew? Thanks Little House Living!
The big boxes—48/64 pack came with built-in crayon sharpeners, but who had one of those? We sharpened ours the tried-and-true way, by angling the dull edge against the paper and shading while rotating until we had a nice point.
Turns out we have a pair of cousins Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith to thank for Crayola Crayons. Their company manufactured that first boxed set of 8, which debuted in 1903. And Alice Stead Binney (Edwin’s wife) who combined the French words for chalk and oily (craie and oleaginous) to create “Crayola.”
“The crayons were sold for a nickel and the colors were black, brown, blue, red, purple, orange, yellow, and green. ”
Here’s more:
Crayon Trivia
Crayola makes over 3 billion crayons a year.
Crayola crayons come in 120 colors plus “specialty colors”
About 50 shades have been retired including Dandelion, Maize, Blizzard Blue, Fuchsia. Want to know all the colors Crayola Makes?
The world's largest crayon was made by Crayola. It was 15'6" and weighed 1,352 pounds.
Since 1903 Crayola has made over 237 billion crayons.
The newest Crayola creation came out in 2020. It’s a skin-tone box set of 32 called “Colors of the World.”
Poetry Challenge #185
Color Your World
Celebrate National Crayon Day by taking a deep breath back into your Crayola Crayon memory box, back to one specific day, place, time in your childhood. With that memory in mind and its specific shades and smells, write a poem about it. It might be a poem about crayons or coloring, but not necessarily.
Choose one color from the poem, or an overarching color for your poem—from a Crayola Crayon box or all your own—to serve as the title.
Open your Crayola Box; Take a Sniff . . .
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
*Crayon smell truly is one of American adult’s most remembered childhood scents—and not only because I said so. Take a poll and see for yourself. Or take Bustle.com’s word for it.
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge more than 1800 days ago! 185 weeks ago we began creating prompts to share with you. 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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Ask Norman T Goldfish: What's a Rombus?
Norman T. Goldfish answers letters from readers. Click on the link to read his reply.
Hey Kids! We know goldfish go to school—rather they swim in schools. But, do they study geometry? Do you know what a rombus is? Scroll down to see Norman’s answer…
Glug
Glug
Glug . . .
Say kids: While “rombus” reads correctly, it’s really spelled “rhombus” (you probably knew that already, but Norman didn’t.) Here’s more from mathsisfun.com
Do you have a question for Norman the Goldfish—about friends, school, pets, family, life in and outside the fishbowl? Send him a letter!
Poetry Challenge #184-Pathya Vat
This wasn’t my idea. Cindy’s foray into form brought up Cambodia. But, as prompt’s do, it set me on a journey. In 2006 as Jill Max (the name Ronnie Davidson and I use for co-authored work) STRANGERS IN BLACK (Royal Fireworks Press) a memoire of a boy’s struggle to survive in Khmer Rouge controlled Cambodia was published. We wrote it, with “Mok,” through his eyes and memory, without having visited Cambodia—or ever imagining we could—because then, and well into the 90s, Cambodia was closed off from the rest of the world.
Four years of weekly meetings with the half Vietnamese-half Cambodian man that Mok had become (a man afraid to use his real name for fear of retaliation by Khmer Rouge sympathizers), 4 years of research, reading translations of mostly French texts and pouring over photos—before a draft was written.
And then, 3 years after the type was set, the unimaginable happened: I visited Cambodia, what’s more, Siem Reap! The city, the region, perhaps the very village where our book began, and to the massive temple of Anchor Wat, an architectural, engineering marvel Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge regime touted as the reason to purge Cambodia ne Kampuchea from all foreign influence—and kill more than 2 million people in the process (read Haing Ngor’s Survival in the Killing Fields; watch The Killing Fields). Here are a few images of the land that inspired this foray into Cambodian poetic form.
Poetry Challenge #184
Pathya Vat
A Pathya Vat is a form of poetry from Cambodia. It is a four-line poem with four syllables on each line. The second and third lines rhyme.
You can string multiple Pathya Vats together to make a longer poem the same way you can connect several haikus. If you have multiple verses, the last word on line 4 becomes the rhyme for lines 2 & 3 in the next verse.
Pathya Vat poems are usually spoken or sung. Originally intended to be memorized, so the short lines and rhyme helped the performer. Usually, Pathya Vat are about nature.
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 1800 days ago! We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. 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 #183-Get Your Green On!
Along with corned beef & cabbage, Irish coffee(s), crazy green hats-socks-ties-googly glasses, and talking with fake brogues (that usually ends up sounding more Pirate, than Leprechaun), St. Paddy’s Day is all about green. So, in the spirit of the day, let’s play with green poetry.
Poetry Challenge #183
Get Your Green On!
Think of as many shades of green as you can, and green things, and meanings of the word green. YourDictionary.com listed 48.
With one or many of these to mine, write a “Green” poem. The subject of your poem might be St. Paddy’s day, but it might not. It might rhyme or it might not. It might follow a form, it might not. For this poem, there is only one rule and one challenge:
Rule: DO NOT USE the word “green”.
Challenge: How many shades of green—color or meanings—you can use?
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
May your words swirl free and green as the water in a leprechaun’s bowl!
Just for fun, here are 42 St. Patrick’s Day Jokes for Kids
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 4 years ago today (March 17th)! We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. 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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Ask Norman T Goldfish: What's Your Favorite Food?
Norman T. Goldfish answers letters from readers. Click on the link to read his reply.
Hey Kids! What are your favorite foods? Have you ever tasted fish food? Do you think you’d like to eat the same things Norman eats? To read Norman’s answer? Scroll down . . .
Glug
Glug
Glug . . .
Say kids: Did you know that goldfish do have teeth, but they are in their throats? And that goldfish will eat and eat and eat without every having full tummies—because they don’t have stomachs at all! WANT TO KNOW MORE?
Do you have a question for Norman the Goldfish—about friends, school, pets, family, life in and outside the fishbowl? Send him a letter!
Poetry Challenge #182-What Did One Blueberry Say to the Other Blueberry?
…Why don’t you popover later?
Today is National Blueberry Popover Day. Think of those blueberry pastries, steaming hot from the oven. Smell the sweet, blueberry steam. Bite into the flaky, buttery pastry. Is your mouth watering yet?
Poetry Challenge #182
What Did One Blueberry Say to the Other Blueberry?
Say it 3x fast: Blueberry Popover …Blueberry Popover …BLUEBERRY POPOVER …
Now think about the parts of the words: blue, berry, pop, over.
What happens if you change their order or which words go together? Write a poem where you do just that. (You can add other words as well.)
Play with the words.
Play with the rhythm of repeating those words in different orders.
Play with how they look on the page: will you make them BOLD? Big? Colorful?
Read your poem aloud and make it sound as good as blueberry popovers smell and taste. Mmmmmmmm!
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
And now that’s you’re in a blueberry popover state of mind, here’s a recipe courtesy of thefoodiepatootie.com:
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge more than 1781 days ago! We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. 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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Ask Norman: How Slow Can You Swim?
Norman T. Goldfish answers letters from readers. Click on the link to read his reply.
Hey Kids! If you’re read his stories, you know Norman can swim so fast he leaps clear out of his fishbowl. That’s fast! But, how slow do you think he can swim? Scroll down to see Norman’s answer…
Glug
Glug
Glug . . .
Say kids: What about backwards? And upside down? Yes, Norman! Yes, Norman! But not very well. WANT TO KNOW MORE?
Norman is a happy goldfish! He has a new fishbowl and 2 friends: Diver and Not (that’s what Dylan named the black fantail).
Do you have a question for Norman the Goldfish—about friends, school, pets, family, life in and outside the fishbowl? Send him a letter!
Poetry Challenge #181-Anthem in the Key of Life
March 3rd, 2021 marks the 90th birthday of our national anthem. Yep, although written by Frances Scott Key in 1814, and having been sung proudly—if off-key often— for than 100 years in between, it wasn’t until March 3, 1931, Pres. Hoover signed a congressional resolution officially declaring “The Star Spangled Banner” the official anthem of the USA.
And while we’ve been singing the anthem, and hearing it sung zillions of times—for sports enthusiasts I mean that literally, most recently by Lady Gaga at President Biden’s Inauguration: take a listen!—how often do we consider the words?
Poetry Challenge #181
Anthem in the Key of Life
In celebration of National Anthem Day, Let’s pick up where Frances Scott Key left off.
Choose a line of the Star Spangled Banner and use it as the first line of your poem.
Maybe the first:
Oh say can you see_________________
or the last:
…Home of the brave_____________
or any line in between.
…By the dawn’s early light______________
Let it begin a new anthem for yourself, the country, or the world.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
Oh, Say Can You…
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge more than 1777 days ago! We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. 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