7 Ways to Share Poetry With Children
I know, poetry isn’t everybody’s favorite, but since poetry can help children learn, I think it’s good to find ways to include poetry in daily life. Here’s a few suggestions:
Fill a Basket – Whether by the couch or bedside (or even on the back of the toilet), keep a basket of poetry books handy - if you don’t have poetry OUT, you won’t read it! Throw in a book for yourself too!
Post a Poem – Find a hand-lettered version on Etsy, or create a digital image and frame it. Hang a poem over your kitchen sink, or by your workstation. Even in the car! It doesn’t have to be a long poem, or even a full poem - just having a visual poetry example around the house will inspire you and your children to enjoy poetry more often.
Keep a Poem in your Pocket! – National Poem in your Pocket Day is April 26, and it’s a fun way to remind yourself to enjoy and celebrate poetry, as well as share your favorite poem with others. It’s simple, just keep a copy of any poem in your pocket all day – take it out and read it or share it with people throughout the day! Spread the poetry love! I’ll be running a Poem in your Pocket Blog linky that day, so take the next week or so to find a poem you’d like to share in a “pocket post” on your blog!
Attend a Poetry Reading – I remember attending a local poetry reading at the Hillstead Museum Sunken Gardens – lying on the lawn, watching the sun set and listening to local authors read their poetry was so relaxing! Libraries often have events like this too (for adults and kids!). Or create your own neighborhood or school group event!
Record a poem – Either read a selection of poetry yourself to record, or have your children read/record a sampling of poetry. Burn it to a CD and you can listen to your own voices reciting poetry in the car or around the house!
Read-Aloud – Pick a specific time of day or task during which you will read-aloud poetry to your children. Perhaps they can do a small task like folding towels, or coloring while you read poetry. Sometimes children need gentle exposure to poetry – they might not SIT through a poem like they would through a story, so try to work it into the background!
Pick a Theme – find poetry books on a topic your children already enjoy reading about – if they love dogs, read poems about dogs! (My favorite is Sharon Creech’s Love That Dog verse novel!). Or if you’re taking a trip, find poetry relating to your vacation – since we love to camp, I love reading Kristen O’Connell George’s Toasting Marshmallows to my son. He’s only two, but he already loves many of the poems in this book!
There’s so many ways we can celebrate poetry with our children. If we wait until kids get to the upper elementary or middle school and then “force” the study of poetry on them because “that’s what’s in the curriculum,” poetry will seem arbitrary, and of course they will balk at this unfamiliar genre. Instead, weave poetry in small and subtle ways into the fabric of daily life, and enjoying poetry will come naturally.
How would you include poetry in your daily life? Will you participate in Poem in your Pocket Day?
Crocuses, daffodils, and tulips – Oh my!
This post brought to you by Bulbs. Dig, Drop, Done. All opinions are 100% mine.
I love the first bit of color that shows up in spring… crocuses, tulips, daffodils… then my favorite… irises!
Bulb flowers are my favorite type of flower, and they are easy to grow and care for. Plant in pots or in the ground – perfect for any type of gardener! Best of all, they come back year after year, and multiply (so long as the deer don’t eat them!).
I discovered a great tool for gardeners of all levels – DigDropDone.com – educating readers about the ease and beauty of bulb plants. Along the way you’ll meet fabulous ladies with their own gardening style who help you plan the perfect gardening experience with their tips!
For instance, did you know you need to clean up bulb debris at the end of the season to keep pests from finding your buried bulbs? I learned that from Evelyn, my favorite tipster because we have such a deer issue in our area, so I could relate to her gardening style!
DigDropDone.com has tons of ideas for creative gift-giving and family activities with bulbs. Their springtime flower baskets (with Peeps!) and centerpieces were inspiring. And bulbs in winter? Visit www.digdropdone.com to learn more about how cool you can make a dormant bulb look at Christmastime!
Right now (actually only until April 15th) DigDropDone is hosting a “Bulbs. Dig, Drop, Done.” Contest at Curbside Chaos – an educational effort to get women excited about the beauty of flower bulbs. Submit a photo of your yard in need of help and you could win a $5,000 yard makeover and a visit from Taniya Nayak.
Also, for every Twitter share of the contest, “Bulbs. Dig, Drop, Done.” donates $1 to Rebuilding Together, the nation’s leading nonprofit, working to preserve affordable homeownership and revitalize communities.
Everybody can win with the Garden Guru Tool that helps you figure out what bulb is right for your home – select a bulb and bloom time and you get a custom planting guide to view or print!
We have a lot of bulbs in our garden already, but every spring I find myself wishing I’d planted more the previous fall – I just can’t get enough of their vibrant colors and shapes!
Do you garden? Have you gardened with bulb flowers?
Cloth Diaper Friday :: Disposable liners compared
I want to chat briefly about my experiences with disposable liners for cloth diapers.
I do like using them. VERY handy for cleaning up messes quickly and helping to avoid staining your diapers.
I’ve tried the Bummis Bio-Soft disposable liners - these are very nice. Although the most expensive at $8.00 for 100. I preferrered the 5×12 size as I find the wider version to be too much to deal with folding it over to keep it from sticking out the sides of the diaper. I suppose you could actually wrap it around a diaper insert for better stain protection. But if you have an All-In-One or Pocket, you’ll be folding it. Definitely it was done after one use. Certainly the softest liner I used.
AppleCheeks disposable liners were great, possibly my favorite! You can get them from my sponsor, SweetBottoms Baby – $7.95 for 100! Very soft, and the size I received for testing earlier this year was perfect. If my son only had pee in his diaper, I could wash it and sometimes reuse it if it didn’t go through the dryer. But usually I would forget and throw them in the dryer, in which case, they tended not to be usable.
Right now, I’m using Imse Vimse disposable liners. The least expensive at $5.95 for 100. I gotta admit, I really wanted to like these liners because of the cost. But they are not my favorites. I find them to be stiff/scratchy. Since they are a little stiffer, they don’t lay as flat in the diaper. Which can be bad when you’re changing a squirming toddler. Now the benefit is that coming out of the wash the liner is totally reusable. But still not very soft. If you let it go through the dryer, it holds up well, but will probably “accordion” fold and be annoying to spread back out. So… I tried very hard to like this brand, because I had heard they were reusable after washing (which is true).
But give me my soft liners any day. That’s what I’d want if it were me. But they all work to keep the poop off the diaper itself!
There’s a few other disposable liners on the market I’d love to try like the GroVia or the OsoCozy. So the jury is still out on my true favorite disposable liner! You certainly don’t NEED these kinds of accessories to cloth diaper successfully, but they can be handy to have around!
Do you use disposable liners with your cloth diapers? What’s your favorite?
Would you like fresh fruit with that?
Do you find meal planning to be a big time hog? I do. I research and look up recipes, and try new things. They sometimes flop. Take way longer than anticipated. Or my son won’t eat my latest, greatest toddler meal creation. And I’m back to the drawing board again.
I have intentions and goals for “homemade” meals from scratch. I know some of you are genius at that, and I’d love your ideas for nutritious meals on a busy schedule.
But…since I haven’t achieved meal-planning-perfection, I do rely on a few “ready-to-go” options. One thing I’ve tried to successfully (when I take the time to set it up) include nutritious meals in my daily routines, is to create “Mommy’s Take Out” tray. This works especially well for lunch. And it also works because we have a second refrigerator which gives me the extra room to do this!
I know this might sound SUPER simple to you, but it’s something that really works for us! I started doing this several years ago after thinking about why I was avoiding making lunches and just going for the “fast food” option instead. I realized it was because it is EASY to just run through the drive through or school cafeteria and have someone else do all the work and hand you a lunch to eat.
So I decided to be my own drive-through. By creating a “pick up and go” lunch for each day of the work week in advance, I cut back on my hemming and hawing in front of an open refrigerator every morning (which often led to that inevitable drive of shame through the fast food line!). All the work gets done in about 15 minutes on Sundays, and I don’t have to think about it again. Save time. Save money. Eat healthy!
What I do is plan out the lunch menu for the week. Then I get a big cookie sheet. On the sheet, I stack all the foods I’ll need for an entire week of lunches. I’ll group them together for each day. It might look something like this:
- M - Soup (usually leftovers from the weekend), crackers, apple
- T - Yogurt, granola bar, carrot sticks & celery
- W – PBJ, banana (For PBJ I don’t actually MAKE the sandwich, I just put the bread slices in Tupperware and the PBJ right next to that. It’s the most time-consuming lunch of the week! LOL!).
- Th – Yogurt, pretzels, banana
- F – Hard boiled egg, orange, granola bar
The above is just an example. It depends what I have on hand. Doing the weekly meal tray made sure I had lunch ingredients on hand, and it ensured my husband and I were eating a healthy meal for lunch, without breaking the bank, or wasting our time.
You’ll notice yogurt plays a role in the above lunch routine. While I am currently on a modified diet that reduces dairy, and I do wish that yogurt cups had far less sugar content, I still think a yogurt can be a good snack or lunch item on occasion, because of the probiotics in a yogurt like Activia. Activia contains Bifidus Regularis which may help regulate your digestive system when consumed daily for two weeks as part of a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle. When I do eat dairy these days, it’s typically yogurt for digestive benefits. Oh, and because I love yogurt!!!
Prior to reducing my dairy consumption, Activia was pretty much THE yogurt I would buy. For this blog tour with Mom Central, I got to try the new Activia Select French Silk. I really liked the texture - very creamy – what I particularly love about dairy is the creamy texture!! I didn’t find the flavor to be too much different than regular Activia. And I like that although there’s sugar, Activia does NOT use artificial sweeteers or High Fructose Corn Syrup – a big plus in my book!
Here’s some other thoughts:
PRO: Activia Selects is a larger container (6 oz, not the usual 4 oz), giving you more protein, not noticeably more sugar, and you’ll feel more full.
CON: The price is significantly higher ($.74 vs $1.29 where I live), and the fat content more than doubled, even though the amount of yogurt has not doubled (4 oz vs. 6 oz). Something to keep in mind!
If you want to read more, visit Activia Selects, or the Activia website!
It’s hard to find time for a nutritious meal on a mom’s busy schedule. Planning ahead to have ingredients on hand, creating meals that can “walk out the door” with you, and sticking to your plan are great ways to fit good eating into your lifestyle!
What’s your biggest meal planning challenge?
Disclosure: I wrote this review while participating in a campaign by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of Dannon Activia Selects Yogurt Series and received a coupon to facilitate my review and a promotional item to thank me for taking the time to participate. However, my opinions are entirely my own and I have not been paid to publish positive comments.
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