Day Three: Comparisons, DeShawn Days, and Botanical Gardens

Dear Elm Tree Fams and those who love poetry slams,

Thank goodness the weather gave us a minor break because today we walked around a lot! Since it's a favorite activity amongst the kiddos, we started our morning in the forested area playing hide-and-seek and looking for insects. Some of the children discovered horn-like protrusions growing from leaves on a tree near our play area boundary (we have boundaries, so no one at Elm Tree gets lost in the backwoods of Bk). We all wondered what they could be? Some children thought the protrusions might be a type of fungus while others thought they could be symptoms of a tree disease :(. We also saw some mushrooms on the ground. Wynnifred told us they were poisonous, so we stayed away. Below are photographs of your children exploring:

Next on our agenda: the morning meeting! We sat under our fave meeting tree by the park entrance and discussed different types of comparisons (similes!). We gave a few examples, like comparing a glass building to an ice castle and a robot, and read a few comparison poems by other children. We asked the children what words they heard repeated in each of the different comparisons. They caught on immediately, shouting out, "like!" and "as!" Then we asked the Elm Tree crew to try making their own comparisons, and they got into the spirit right away. They compared a nearby lamp post to a tree and a magic wand, and the water fountain to a little tree and an ice cream cone. Miriam astounded us all when she suggested that a leaf full of holes was "as holy as the earth!" What a natural wordsmith! 

We also discussed the difference between a poem and a story, pointing out  that while most stories maintain consistent characters, plot, setting, and events that follow one another clearly, a poem can make wild and crazy jumps between lines. They also don't require the use of proper punctuation, and can make as much or as little sense as the poet wants...ie. poets rock our world and novelists/ short story writers are cool too!

By the time our conversation ended, it was time for snack. We walked over to Mount Prospect Park on the other side of the library, since we planned on going to the Botanical Gardens in the afternoon. On the way over, we sang our hippopotamus song and "Down by the Bay," which allows the kiddos to practice creating their own silly rhymes. We found a shady spot and plopped down for refreshments before delving into our work. Once we were all relaxed, Sally read us DeShawn Days by a NYC poet, Tony Medina. 

In DeShawn Days, a little boy named DeShawn tells the readers all about his life in the city. He lives in an apartment with his mom, uncle, grandma, and cousin. He writes about his life with them,  what he does for fun, a nightmare he has, and what his neighborhood is like in each of the seasons. After finishing the book, we discussed our own families and apartments/ houses. The children talked about who they live with, whether or not they have pets, what their parents and grandparents are like, and whether or not their grandparents and great-grandparents are still alive. All this talk about family led naturally into poems about our own lives. A few children decided to copy Medina's writing style of using long sentences by stacking up phrases and placing the word "and" between them. Below are pictures of your children at work followed by photographs of their work:

By Wynnifred

By Lyla

By Esmee

By Miriam

By Hector

By Ulysses

After reading, writing, and illustrating, we were ready for lunch, even though it didn't seem like it had been that long since snack time! We ate and talked and re-hydrated before heading over to the gardens. Inside, we decided to look for the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden first because we wanted to see the turtles and fish. Ulysses, Lyla, and Miriam led the way, since they had all been there before. 

We spent a long time on the wooden benches looking over the railing at the pond and the many fish and turtles swimming just below the surface. During this time, Romy and Sally furiously deleted photos from their phones in an attempt to free up space. Unfortunately, we couldn't do it fast enough to take pictures of the children at the pond, but, after deleting a few apps, we were able to capture the next leg of our journey: the Shinto shrine!

Dedicated to Inari, the harvest god and protector of plants, the Shinto shrine in the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens is made up of a small house protected by a fence and two fox statues. The kids stood entranced by the house for a few minutes, wondering what could live there and if they could go inside. Some of them found the shrine a bit eerie, so we decided to write a quick story about the foxes standing sentry to help make it a less scary place. Below is a transcription of the children's story: 

Everyone was looking at the fox shrine when one of the foxes came alive, when suddenly...

She bited both of us (Wynnifred and Ulysses)!... (And me!)... and Hector! ... (And me!)... and Miriam! ... (And me!) ... (And me!) ... and Lyla and Esmee! And then she went back into a statue, when suddenly...

Both of the foxes came back alive, and they went off somewhere, and there were still people stuck in the garden, when suddenly...

A dragonfly popped out of the house, when suddenly...

One time, it was trying to go in the house of someone, and we were in the Botanical Gardens, and we were sleeping, when suddenly...

A mouse ran out of the house and came down the stairs and followed the tracks of the foxes and turned those foxes back into statues and brought them back to the fox temple. 
THE END.

Once we all felt comfortable with our surroundings, we moved on, and decided to finish our visit in the Rose Garden. After a quick thorn-reminder, we let the kids explore independently. Below are a few photos of our time with the roses:

All this walking around made us so hot and thirsty! We refilled our water bottles (twice for the thirstiest among us), and started our walk back to Grand Army Plaza. Even singing our favorite songs couldn't get us moving much faster than slugs this time around, so we tried taking big, giant steps. We made it eventually, and all the kiddos hopped onto the park wall to await their parents' arrival.


Thanks for another great day, everyone! See you tomorrow for a visit to the library and the Brooklyn Museum.

<3 Romy & Sally