Hi Elm Tree fams! Today it was hot outside! We embraced it, though, and started our day by playing hide and seek and writing collaborative stories in the shade. Sally taught us a new collaborative storytelling game called, "When Suddenly." We discussed the importance of maintaining setting, characters, and continuing the plot throughout the story. We sat in a circle, and one person started the story. When the storyteller felt their turn was over, they signaled for the next person to take over by saying, "when suddenly...." We continued in this manner until we agreed upon an ending. We recorded the story-session and here it is transcribed below:
I was on my way to the grocery store with Romy, and we were extremely hungry because it was after camp. Out of an alley walked a magician, when suddenly...
He made a bunny pop out of his hat and he made a hula hoop explode, when suddenly...
The bunny started to grow, and it grew really, really, really tall and it was taller than the tallest building in New York City, taller than the Freedom Tower, taller than the Clock Tower, than the Empire State Building, and, and, and taller than the Statue of Liberty. And then he started stomping. And he was stomping and stomping on all these buildings, and people were saying, "Oh no, don't stomp on my house!"
But he's a nice a bunny!
But the bunny was nice, he just didn't know what he was doing. He was a little bit confused because this was a new place for him, when suddenly...
He ate a plane, and then he exploded, when suddenly...
A big, big, big statue of liberty falled down, when suddenly...
It crashed on people, and the bunny came back to life, when suddenly...
The bunny saw the Statue of Liberty was falling on people, and since he was so big, he picked it up with his arms and put it back upright, when suddenly...
He thought that the people were food, and he ate the principal of P.S. 133, when suddenly...
The bunny started to glow!!!!! And you could see all of his insides, all of his intestines, and you could see all the people that he ate, and in the middle of his body the principal was banging against his body, and he was saying, "Help! Help!" And all the kids from the school came and surrounded the bunny, and they were saying, "Ha-ha! Ha-ha! The principal's inside of the bunny!"
No, no, no, they were saying, "Hey, let the principal go!"
And some kids, the very, very nice kids, were saying, "Hey, hey, hey bunny, throw up that principal!" when suddenly...
The bunny exploded.
Again?
Again. And then the principal got released, when suddenly...
The bunny didn't know that he was in the sky, when suddenly...
That doesn't make sense!
Yes it does! He exploded!
When suddenly... the fireworks came and the bunny fell down and a hole got buried. The bunny got buried in the hole.
The End.
After our storytelling session, we discussed the use of simile and metaphor by comparing the sky, apartments, streetlight to the ocean, to a robot, to a spaceship, and more. Rather than explaining the definitions, we jumped right into comparing these objects using 'like' and 'as.' The children caught on really quickly and had fun making comparisons.
Then we had our snacks, put on sunscreen, and walked over to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. Once in the gardens, we made our way to the Cherry Esplanade. The entire staff of the Gardens already knew Ulysses, and he acted as our guide. We found some benches and settled in to listen to some poems about animals and weather that emphasized simile and metaphor. We talked about the different plants, animals, and objects in the gardens, and each child wrote from the perspective of one of these things (personification). Below are the images of the children working and poems from their notebooks:
Next we had lunch at Mount Prospect Park, took a rest, and listened to Romy and Sally read the end of Catwings and poems from the book Poems to Learn by Heart, edited by Caroline Kennedy. We read poems by Langston Hughes, Samuel Beckett, Naomi Shihab Nye, e. e. cummings, Nikki Giovanni, and more. A few of us even fell asleep!
We got up feeling refreshed and finished the day at the sprinklers! As always, we made new friends, and even got a few water balloons to splash on the concrete.
See you tomorrow for a visit to the Brooklyn Museum and more writing time!
<3 Romy & Sally
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