Three Minute Poetry

Here’s a quick idea to get the creative juices flowing this summer: Three Minute Poetry. Good for adults too! Three minute poetry is a great way to help people break through the idea that they can’t write, or that they are not creative writers. It works best (and is most often relevant) for late elementaryContinue reading “Three Minute Poetry”

In Defense of Boredom

It’s important to have unstructured time. It’s important to have time to daydream, to wander, to tinker, to putz. It’s important to get bored. That’s right. Bored. As I understand it, boredom is a necessary blankness that makes space for truly awesome ideas. “Only boring people get bored,” my mom used to say when weContinue reading “In Defense of Boredom”

Horizontal Weasel Cookies

Here is a great exercise for breaking through our own boringness, getting exposure to the texture and beauty of foreign languages, and just practicing getting words down on paper quickly. I’ve found even some of my most reluctant writers to thrive on this one, and it’s a perennial favorite. I learned it as a poetryContinue reading “Horizontal Weasel Cookies”

Eat the Evidence

This exercise is part of a yearly Frog Hollow tradition: Spy School. Technically, I’m not supposed to tell you anything about Spy School (what Spy School?) on strict decoded orders from a mysterious character named Agent Secretface. So we’ll just say I was telling you about our Observational Writing Day. How does that sound? Anyhow,Continue reading “Eat the Evidence”