Category Archives: Exercises

Translation with Nine Year Olds

Posted on April 18, 2016 by thefriendlymoth

I’ve been doing poems using words in Spanish or French with my students for several years, and have been trying to figure out a way to do our own translations. They love working with words in other languages, but it’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Exercises, Language, Literature, Poetry, Uncategorized | Tagged Education, Frog Hollow School, Homeschooling, Seattle, teaching poetry, Teaching writing, Translation | Leave a comment

Writing to Music

Posted on November 13, 2014 by thefriendlymoth

Once or twice a year, I bring my mp3 player into class, and we write to music. We write to things like Tchaikovsky, Bach, Buena Vista Social Club, Edith Piaf, fiddle tunes, Tuvan throat singing, and a seven year old’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Exercises, Poetry | Tagged classroom games, Creativity, Education, Homeschooling, Seattle, Teaching writing, Writing, writing games | Leave a comment

James Bond and the Past Perfect: teaching grammar through poems

Posted on September 23, 2014 by thefriendlymoth

As I was organizing things for the first class of the year yesterday, I found a gem from the archives. We had been learning about the past perfect tense and how weird it is to try to write in it … Continue reading →

Posted in Exercises, Language, Poetry | Tagged children, Creativity, Education, Grammar, Homeschooling, poetry, Seattle, teaching poetry | Leave a comment

The Homonym List

Posted on September 6, 2014 by thefriendlymoth

Writing about puns got me thinking about homonyms, which made me think of The Homonym List. My little sister was a math kid. She used to put pictures of the math books she had finished in the photo cover of her school … Continue reading →

Posted in Exercises, Language | Tagged children, Education, Homeschooling, homonyms, Language, Seattle, Teaching, Teaching writing, vocabulary, wordplay | Leave a comment