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”

Writing our own Canon

Well, our puppet show performances came off well last week. What I mean by that is not that it was perfect by adult standards, but that the students felt really good about it. They enjoyed it and worked with a tremendous amount of focus to make it their best. Also, there were cupcakes. Kenneth Koch,Continue reading “Writing our own Canon”

Act 2, Scene 3, Mountain Lion Sits in his Cave

We have just finished our second-ever attempt at writing plays and, while I know I’m biased, I think they came out pretty good. Playwriting with children can be a little daunting, partly because the results can be so bad: stiff, surreal, melodramatic. Yet playwriting can also be a great exercise in collaboration, storytelling, character-building, plot, humor,Continue reading “Act 2, Scene 3, Mountain Lion Sits in his Cave”