Libraries Save More Than Books

March 23, 2016June 13, 2020 / Laura Grace Weldon / 9 Comments

CC0 Public Domain

Derrell* is a college senior majoring in chemistry. He told me he owed his upcoming college degree, maybe even his existence, to libraries and librarians.

To understand this you need to go back to Derrell’s early childhood. His mother was in the Army serving in Afghanistan. His father was serving a 28 year sentence for what Derrell was told were false charges. Derrell and his younger brother Devon lived with their grandmother. She suffered from heart problems and diabetes. “I never knew her healthy,” Derrell says. “Her legs were always swollen up and it was hard for her to breathe.”

His grandmother had worked at a lunch counter for nearly 40 years, but by the time her two grandsons came to live with her she wasn’t able to work any longer. Derrell remembers his Gran as smart, always ready with an adage or Bible quote. He also remembers how little they had. A can of soup divided between the three of them, with stacks of plain white bread to fill the stomach, was a typical supper. No money for fruit. Definitely no money to go out anywhere, even to share an order of fries.

In the summer Derell’s grandmother walked the boys to the park. They stayed much of the day, eating a packed lunch, then walked back at supper time. In the winter Derrell’s grandmother walked them to the library where they also stayed most of the day. It was warmer there than in their apartment.

His Gran would flip through magazines or doze in a chair. Derrell and his brother would play in the stacks of the adult section until they were chased out by a librarian, then they’d shuffle off to the children’s section. There they sat on low benches, looking at stacks of picture books and watching people go by through the tall windows.

The best part, Derrell says, was a little drink nook where the library offered coffee, tea, and hot chocolate free for patrons. His Gran showed him how to make the best of a cup of hot chocolate. Dump out the packet, add hot water, but don’t stir. Drink it warm, leaving the dark sludge at the bottom. When it’s gone, take the cup to the drinking fountain and fill it partway with cold water. Mix with your finger. That way you get a hot and cold drink out of one packet. Derrell particularly liked the library’s styrofoam cups. They held the heat or the cold, and he liked to bite the rim until the cup looked as if it had been quilted with interwoven designs.

Librarians in the children’s section arranged all sorts of programs. He was ushered into the first one without knowing what the word “program” meant. There a librarian read aloud a book about a dragon, using puppets for the dialogue. One puppet was a dark green dragon with long teeth. There was also a princess in a shiny blue dress and a knight in foil-bright armor. Derrell was so caught up in the story that he didn’t leave when the other kids walked out of the room. He worked up his courage, holding his little brother’s hand, to ask “what happened next?” The librarian looked up from the case where she was packing the puppets. “Their adventure goes on,” she told him. “It’s just too big a story to tell the whole thing now.” Derrell went to bed that night making up all sorts of endings for the story.

Thanks to library programs, Derrell and his brother painted pictures, made dioramas, went to story hour, listened to musicians play, took part in painting a mural, watched a fencing demonstration, and attended nature programs where they were encouraged to touch baby crocodiles and tiny chinchillas. His grandmother’s cold apartment seemed like a way station between time at the library.

But summer came again and his Gran again took them to the park during the day. Derrell missed the library, but Gran said that was for winter. When cold weather returned Gran was too sick to go there with the boys. She trusted Derrell to take his brother on his own. But there were new policies in place. If kids weren’t signed up in advance they couldn’t attend programs. The door to the room where hot chocolate poured into styrofoam cups was locked. Although he tried to sit down and show his brother books, the little boy ran and yelled through the library until they both were asked to leave.

Things didn’t get better for Derrell. His grandmother got sicker and eventually died. His mother reclaimed them but was so ill with PTSD that she wasn’t able to handle them for long. They stayed with different relatives until eventually they were put into foster homes. Those were painful years. Derrell is still coming to terms with them. But he never forgot that sanctuary called the library.

“Gran probably took us to the library because it had free coffee for her and cocoa for us, ” he says. “But it changed my life. Even after I was a foster kid, I went to the library after school and on Saturdays to get away. The library was always the best kind of hideout.”

“My advice is to talk to librarians every time you go. They’re there because they’re into books too,” Derrell says, “and especially if you go a lot and they get to know you, they’ll save books they’re excited for you to read. If I hadn’t hung out at the library I wouldn’t have read books like 47, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, or Somewhere in the Darkness. And I sure wouldn’t have had my mind snapped open by men I wanted to emulate like Uncle Tungsten, Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman, and The Pact.

Derrell is now 23 years old, finishing up his last year of college classes and also working the late shift at a convenience store. He says he can’t even smell hot chocolate without the sensation of biting a design into the malleable shape of cup offered for free.

*name changed

Resources

Libraries are one of the cornerstones of civilization and libraries continue to help cultures evolve.

More and more libraries now offer book-like loans on things such as telescopes, tools, musical instruments, and cookware.

Find a toy library near you with USA Toy Library Association listings and find out more via the International Toy Library Association.

Find a MakerSpace library.

Discover 10 Reasons to Be a Library Addict (magic water is involved).

Celebrate Hug Your Librarian Day. Librarians should be celebrated every day, in my book.

Mr. Trump: Hate Speech Escalates Violence

March 17, 2016October 1, 2020 / Laura Grace Weldon / 31 Comments

I spent years teaching nonviolence to teachers, church congregations, incarcerated people, and others. Most knew very little about the long and powerful history of nonviolence.

Nonviolence doesn’t mean living without anger or conflict. Strong emotions like anger can be a positive catalyst for change; fueling us to become more aware, to take action, or to seek help. Conflict is an inevitable part of human interaction. Dealing with conflict constructively, creatively, and with mutual regard allows conflict to serve a useful purpose.

Here’s a comparison of violent versus nonviolent responses, developed by the late John Looney, founder of the Peace Grows course, Alternatives to Violence.

What’s the first nonviolence principle we should know? De-escalation. A major characteristic of violence, verbal as well as physical, is that it tends to escalate. It is most easily reversed at the beginning and becomes progressively more difficult to stop as it spirals into more intense violence.

Those who study the effects of intervention in violent situations have found when others object or actively intervene, their efforts tend to slow or stop the violence. Dr. Ervin Staub, who survived under Nazi rule, reports in The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence, that the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the Nazis in Germany began their campaigns of genocide with small persecutions which citizens allowed to continue. He reports that action by “bystanders” (those who are not victim or perpetrator) empowers the victim and diminishes the power of the aggressor. But ignoring the suffering of others allows the violence to escalate.

Mass violence tends to start with hate speech. Large-scale atrocities like the Armenian massacre, the Holocaust, the Bosnian war, and the Rwandan genocide can be traced back to hate speech.

Broadly defined, hate speech is any speech, gesture, or conduct which may incite violence or prejudicial action against an individual or group on the basis of ethnic origin, religion, gender, race, sexual orientation, or disability.

Hate speech inflames and escalates violence. It’s often stirred up by those who seek to hide their own power-seeking machinations. They use it to distract and create conflict between the very groups most likely to suffer from their actions.

Hate speech must be stopped. If not, it escalates, causing increasing repression and violence — sometimes to horrific levels. And yet we’re living at a time in history when hate speech attracts media attention and political adulation. It may seem incomprehensible, but it’s happening. Yes, I’m referring to Mr. Trump’s utterances. Here’s a sample.

Slurs and dangerous accusations against people based on ethnic origin.

Slurs and prejudicial actions based on religion.

Violent and demeaning untruths based on religion.

To which the Council on American-Islamic Relations responded, saying Mr. Trump’s “rhetoric has crossed the line from spreading hatred to inciting violence… By directly stating that the only way to stop terrorism is to murder Muslims in graphic and religiously-offensive ways, he places the millions of innocent, law-abiding citizens in the American Muslim community at risk from rogue vigilantes. He further implies that our nation should adopt a strategy of systematized violence in its engagement with the global Muslim community, a chilling message from a potential leader. We pray that no one who hears this message follows his gospel of hate.”

Advocating gross violations of the Geneva Conventions. “…and if it [torture] doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway for what they do to us”.

Advocating even more gross violations of the Geneva Conventions.

Advocating and applauding violence against protesters.

Mr. Trump fondly reminisces about the days when protesters were viciously beaten, saying, “people like that would be carried out on a stretcher.”

When an African-American protester from Black Lives Matter was punched and possibly choked, Mr. Trump later said in an interview, “Maybe he should have been roughed up.”

Some Trump supporters are inspired to commit hate crimes based on Mr. Trump’s views. For example, Boston brothers Scott and Steve Leader were charged for beating a homeless Mexican man, punching as well as hitting him with a metal pole. One of the men justified the assault, telling police, “Donald Trump was right — all these illegals need to be deported.” When asked for his reaction, Trump said,

“I will say that people who are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again. They are passionate. I will say that, and everybody here has reported it.” Donald Trump

At a North Carolina rally, Trump supporter John McGraw punched a protester in the face. Mr. McGraw later said in an interview, “Next time we see him, we might have to kill him.” and “We don’t know who he is,” he said. “He might be with a terrorist organization.”

Spitting, punching, elbowing, shoving, name-calling, and death threats have become increasingly common at Trump rallies with particularly ugly vehemence directed at African-Americans. Rally-goers have threatened reporters, flashed Hitler salutes, and screamed “light the motherfu**** up.”

According to the World Policy Institute, it can get worse. Much worse. “The power and influence of the figure addressing the speech to a particular audience, along with the contextual factors of that speaker and that audience (i.e. creating false scenarios of self-defense, in which the targeted group are accused of undue murderous acts), are substantial factors in distinguishing hate speech from incitement to genocide.

Remember, the principle of de-escalation. When bystanders (those who are not victim or perpetrator) don’t intervene, hate speech and its consequences escalate.

We’re all bystanders.

Get involved. Speak up. Vote. Protest. Don’t let this happen.

[Update, September 2020. “Since the beginning of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, domestic terrorism has more than doubled in the United States. During the Obama administration’s two terms, the U.S. averaged 26.6 incidents of domestic terrorism per year, according to the Global Terrorism Database. The most active year, by far, was 2016, which saw 67 attacks, more than double Obama’s overall average. During the first two years of Donald Trump’s presidency, 2017 and 2018 – the latest year for which data are available – domestic terror activity stayed that high, with 66 and 67 attacks, respectively.” Reported by James Piazza in The Conversation.]

The Great Dying

March 9, 2016 / Laura Grace Weldon / 5 Comments

Significance of Planetary Flatus

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: Evidence that methane emitted by the single-celled Methanoscarcina caused the largest mass extinction on Earth.

It is called The Great Dying.

250 million years ago

(only seconds in Earth’s long day)

90 percent of all species perished.

It’s blamed on gas.

Eon’s amnesia hides certainty,

yet experts say our verdant Earth

was broiled and poisoned

by these likely suspects:

Methane clathrate, known as “fire ice” (hat tip to Robert Frost).

Massive volcanic eruptions.

Asteroids slamming into shale deposits, instigating a sudden Permian-Triassic fracking.

Now, research incriminates

one-celled Methanosarcina.

It bloomed across oceans,

converting marine carbon

into so much methane

the weather broke.

You who insist humans

can’t change the climate,

consider this microbe.

It waits on the ocean floor.

It waits in your convoluted guts.

It asks you to remember.

Last time

our blue green world

needed ten million years to recover.

Laura Grace Weldon

First published by Litbreak. Find more poems in my collection, Tending.

Big Events for Little Kids? Um, No

March 3, 2016June 2, 2016 / Laura Grace Weldon / 19 Comments

small kids prefer calm to festivals, parties, and fairs

When my firstborn was 10 months old I went to hear a speaker at the evening meeting of a local mother’s organization. Except for nursing babies, children weren’t allowed. Sleeping baby on my shoulder, I sat happily among other women who were going through the same experience that had changed my life so completely at the age of 22. I was acquainted with Le Leche meetings, but women here ramped up the game: hair done, make-up on, reasonably trendy clothes worn. I was wearing the equivalent of a sack, feet stuffed into pre-baby boots, hair an artless mess.

A business meeting was conducted before the speaker was introduced. These were serious women. They ran a tight group with weekly programs and seasonal parties for kids, plus monthly speakers, all made possible by active committees and subcommittees. At the close of the program, two welcoming committee members greeted me, extolling the virtues of the organization and inviting me to a kids’ party in the community rec center the next weekend. My son wasn’t remotely old enough to care but, easily pressured, I agreed to show up.

The party was held in one of those stark recreation center gyms. Even an overload of decorations didn’t make that cavernous space seem welcoming. Large and surprisingly fancy games were set up. These weren’t rented games, they were constructed from plywood and artistically painted, surely the result of much parental labor. Costumed figures roamed at a slow pace. Their progress could be tracked by children’s horrified shrieks and mothers’ eager exclamations. Tiny children were strapped in strollers, slightly older children were expected to do things like stand between taped lines to throw a ball at a brightly painted hole or sit at a table where pre-cut shapes were meant to be glued onto paper. There was a lot of noise. I was more overwhelmed than my son by all these frantic attempts to manufacture fun. We escaped after a few minutes.

The next morning a committee chair called, sweetly informing me the group allowed attendance at two events before I was expected to join. Serving on a committee was a condition of membership. She outlined the group’s structure at length while her baby daughter screamed unrelentingly in the background. I awkwardly explained that membership wasn’t for me, blaming it on my baby’s need for calm and structure. (Pretty much what most other babies in my acquaintance needed as well.)

I didn’t learn quickly. Over the next year or two I checked out a number of weekend events for families. I took my little one to fairs, children’s concerts, and open air arts programs. These were flustering events with more chaos than either one of us could tolerate, punctuated by the wails of tiny children who clearly preferred to toddle or run around rather than be strapped in for an afternoon of overstimulation. End-of-their-rope parents walked grimly by with balloons tied to strollers. I overheard one parent hiss between tightly stretched lips, “We’re here so you can have FUN.”

My little boy seemed smaller at these events, constrained and passive, while at home he was a mighty explorer and intrepid experimenter. Being stuck in a car seat, then a stroller, forced into the observer role —- this wasn’t the way he thrived.

I’ll readily admit my firstborn was an experimental child. Trial and error proved many of my choices for him to be poorly considered, or, more often, far too over considered. (I have apologized to him, even thought he laughs it off as experimental offspring learn to do.) But thanks to those early experiences I spared his younger siblings crowded and contrived events meant to entertain children. The public events we did attend were quieter and more enticing for kids: a yearly peace fair with non-competitive games, an arts festival held at a junkyard, an outdoor international fair where one could wander along while watching music and dance, a nature area’s pioneer program with stations along the trails to teach traditional hands-on skills.

I’d venture to guess there are very few loud, overdone events that really appeal to the youngest kids. When we see this through our children’s eyes we see that exhausting ourselves in pursuit of purported fun isn’t fun at all. Rather than all the fuss getting there, the expense, the promises of merriment, and what always seems like a longer trip back I’m pretty sure kids are happier with an unexpected pleasure like using the garden hose to make mud pies or having mom bring home a big cardboard box to make into a fort or filming some silly home movies with dad’s phone. Invite a kid friend over and it’s even more fun.

Meanwhile, adults can relax a bit. Read a book, sit in the sun, chat with a fellow adult, drink a glass of wine, or heck, make some mud pies too. This isn’t just slacker parenting at its best. It’s also a prescription for peace.

More thoughts on parenting groups:

Collaborate with others to create your own more relaxed parents’ group, meeting up for kid-friendly gatherings at nature areas, playspaces, and back yards.

Find an existing group that meets your needs. If you are nursing a child, try your local Le Leche League chapter. Consider joining the Holistic Moms Network, your local Mothers & More group, Mom’s Club, or check out Meetup.com for groups in your area.

Set up a playgroup that meets in a senior center or assisted living facility. Here’s how.

Average Oppression

February 24, 2016 / Laura Grace Weldon / 15 Comments

Image: Vince Alongi CC by 2.0

“Nature is busy creating absolutely unique individuals, whereas culture has invented a single mold to which all must conform. It is grotesque.” ~Krishnamurti

When one of my sons got a physical for his first full-time job, the doctor informed him he was in the “overweight” category and handed him a pamphlet about weight loss. Tall and well-muscled, my son was in no way overweight. In fact, shirts that correctly fit his shoulders and chest were so oversized at his waist that they billowed out. But BMI charts rely on a standard weight/height ratio to determine what people should weigh. At six feet tall, the chart showed he’d be at a normal weight as low as 140 pounds but was overweight at a strong and healthy 190 pounds.

The logic train derails when we start standardizing anything in nature, whether potatoes or people.

Fresh produce deemed “ugly” (in other words, deviating from average) is tossed out. The United Nations reports that retailers’ “high cosmetic standards” exclude somewhere between 20 to 40 percent of fresh produce from going to market. That translates to 800 to 900 million tons of crooked carrots, asymmetrical apples, lumpy potatoes, and other perfectly edible foodstuffs wasted worldwide. Terribly wrong, but common practice in today’s consumer market.

We’re doing what we can to standardize humans too. Babies are measured against averages even before they’re born. That’s not always helpful. For example, one study shows up to 30% of pregnant women are told they’re carrying large babies, making them five times more likely to end up with a scheduled c-section. That continues even though 90 % of those babies are born weighing less than the medical definition of a large baby. We judge the birth process by averages too, although the very methods used for evaluation can result in more intervention and greater risk.

As we grow up, the metrics defining what’s average come with a built-in expectations that we should surpass them. Parents eagerly compare first steps and first words, as if these milestones are somehow predictive. Preschools introduce academics, often at the expense of free play, even though there’s known harm from using this approach.

Education has never been more test-heavy, starting with timed tests in kindergarten all the way up through SATs, ACTs, and GREs. This too is illogical, because better test scores don’t correlate with later success. A decade and a half (or more) of testing for what, exactly?

Each student has what’s termed a “jagged learning profile.” As Todd Rose explains in his TED talk The Myth of Average, we design education for the average student when there is no such thing as the average student.

If you design learning environments on average, odds are, you designed them for nobody. So no wonder we have a problem. We’ve created learning environments that, because they are designed on average, cannot possibly do what we expected them to do — which is nurture individual potential.

Think about what that really costs us. Because every single student has a jagged learning profile it means that the average hurts everyone, even our best and brightest… Designing on average destroys talent in at least two ways. First, it makes your talent a liability. We all know kids like this. So unbelievably gifted in one area that their educational environment can’t challenge them. They get bored and a shockingly high number of them drop out. The second way that designing on average destroys talent, is that your weakness makes it hard for us to see let alone nurture your talent.

Image from The Myth of Average: Todd Rose at TEDxSonomaCounty

(I urge you to read Todd Rose’s new book, The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness.)

We’re ranked throughout life by metrics like income, educational attainment, weight, cholesterol level, fitness level, and age although such numbers can’t possible describe who we are, how we treat others, or what our lives are like. We know we’re individuals, heck, if it weren’t for variability in facial features we wouldn’t recognize each other. But being measuring against the average is so thoroughly accepted that we don’t call it what it is, oppressive. This kind of ranking is one of the main instruments keeping us separate, disconnected, competitive, busy, and unhappy.

As Rose writes, “Typing and ranking have come to seem so elementary, natural, and right that we are no longer conscious of the fact that every such judgment always erases the individuality of the person being judged.”

Nature shows us the principles inherently necessary in living systems: cross-pollination, diversity, self-assembly, interdependence, adaption, balance, and an undeniable tendency toward beauty. Anything less is limiting and oh so wrong.

Your Permanent Record Isn’t You

February 17, 2016 / Laura Grace Weldon / 12 Comments

Image: CC by 2.0 Alan Levine

I have boxes of old albums in my closet. The cardboard jackets are faded and the records inside may not be playable. I have no way of checking since we haven’t owned a record player for decades.

These relics were once vital to me, but even as a teenager, back when I felt as if I lived within the notes and lyrics of my favorite songs, I didn’t assume that recordings fully expressed an artist’s music. A record was just that, a “record” of what was played at the time the audio equipment was on and how those tracks were edited.

A record can’t capture the process of composing or the life of the musician. It can’t truly sum up the sounds that formed the musician’s work — from lullabies heard in infancy all the way to the hiss of air brakes on a touring bus. A recording is only a glimpse into something larger, deeper, and essentially inexpressible.

Which brings to mind a term that handcuffs students to a superficial and stunningly inadequate account of who they are. Their “permanent record.”

A permanent record is too often a weapon used to cajole and threaten. It teaches kids that their best impulses —- to explore, to find worth, to help others —- are instruments of utility. Although the love of learning and the desire for mastery are higher callings, it reduces them to a way of proving one’s ranking.

We strand young people on a narrow path while the wider world beckons in a million ways. Years of “pay attention” and “eyes on your paper” can dampen, even extinguish the unmeasurable and unique gifts each child brings to life.

Night after night of homework, grade after grade, test score after test score — there’s barely room for what’s not assigned to fit in a student’s life.

Ask today’s students. They’ll tell you there’s no authentic part of themselves in their permanent records other than a summary of the ways they bent (or failed to bend) themselves into shapes expected of them.

I wonder what music is inside that we haven’t let them play?

Teaching a Squirrel to do Tricks, Almost

February 11, 2016February 11, 2016 / Laura Grace Weldon / 10 Comments

No squirrels were harmed in this post. Image by easterngraysquirrel.deviantart.com

Eric* and I knew we could teach a squirrel to do tricks.

First, get it to eat food we’d thrown.

Then, get it to eat from our hands.

Next, train it to come when called.

Ultimately, get it to wear a costume and ride a squirrel-sized bicycle.

We talked about this at length, interrupting each other eagerly as new thoughts occurred to us. I was so thrilled at the prospect that my spine seemed to jingle with sparks.

Eric and I didn’t normally play together. We didn’t normally speak to each other. Boys and girls almost never hung out together in my neighborhood, and besides, he was going into fourth grade that fall while I’d only be a third-grader.

But Eric and I were united by a vision. Sitting in his front lawn, grass bristling against our legs, we bragged about how much animals liked us. Eric said he could whistle and a bird would land on his arm. He didn’t offer to demonstrate that skill right then. I implied I was some kind of mystic who could hear animals talk to each other. I was pretty sure I could hear that squirrel, sitting on its haunches in a nearby tree, practically begging us to be its friend.

All our efforts to lure it closer failed, so we reluctantly decided to build a squirrel trap. Not that we were the trapping sort of kids, but we’d make it up to the squirrel once we’d captured him.

Enthralled, we didn’t pay any attention to the likelihood of our vision becoming a reality. The moment was everything. We were in the powerful state of flow. You know what this feels like — invigorating, enlivening, wholly absorbing.

Process actually has more to do with our happiness than outcome, according to some psychologists. Maybe this is what happens when highly successful people don’t appear all that blissful once they’ve gotten to the top of their fields. Celebrities, sports figures, and others sometimes reach what seems to be the pinnacle of wealth and status only to self-destruct. Eric and I weren’t likely to reach the pinnacle of squirrel training, but we didn’t care.

We rustled up some scrap wood, a hammer, and nails. Squatting on a driveway too hot to sit on, we tried to transform small and oddly shaped plywood pieces into the trap of our dreams. When that failed we simply tried to build some kind of 3-D shape. We failed, failed again, failed a few more times, then resorted to something else. A cardboard box.

This material was easier to handle but not easy enough. The dull mat knife we were allowed to use barely sawed through the cardboard. Our attempts at making a door we could shut from a distance gave us several quite painful rubber band-related injuries. We slowed down as we realized our grand plans might not be workable. Not because it wasn’t a great idea, we agreed, but due to our construction skill deficits.

Both of us still loved the vision of that squirrel becoming our friend. Even if he didn’t wear a costume and learn to ride a squirrel-sized bicycle, we were happy there in the driveway where we’d realized magic was just a little too hard for us to build right then. There was awkward silence.

Thankfully, two bigger boys rode by on their bikes and mocked Eric for playing with a girl. Relieved, we took this as an excuse to go our separate ways, completely satisfied with our attempts. That squirrel never knew how close it was to fame.

*Name changed just in case Eric is now a squirrel whisperer.

45 Cures for Cabin Fever

February 3, 2016January 10, 2024 / Laura Grace Weldon / 4 Comments

fun inside activities, cabin fever cures

Stuck inside? Make cabin fever fun by trying something new.

Set a new world record. The youngest person to write a bilingual book was six years old and youngest professional videogamer was six years old. Guinness World Records has a long list of records they encourage kids to break including most balloons burst in 30 seconds, tallest toilet paper tower in 30 seconds, largest bubblegum bubble, most dice stacked with chopsticks in a minute. Check out the kids’ area of the site for challenges as well as their and links for educators.

Stage an indoor snowball battle. Grab some paper from the recycling pile, crumple into balls, and throw.

Yarnbomb a piece of furniture. Too complicated? Just wrap it in brightly colored yarn or fabric strips.

Turn your daily lives into a guessing game. Take turns issuing a challenge and writing down everyone’s guesses, then prove each other right or wrong. The proof part is particularly fun as everyone hurries to count, measure, and calculate. Kids might choose to guess how many shoes are in the house. How many books. How many countries are represented in a drawerful of shirts (as long as they have origin tags). Guess the measurement of each other’s heads. How many inches it is from the front door to the TV, the computer, the bathroom. Guess how many days or hours each person has been alive. How long each person can stand on one foot. Well, you get the idea. The kids will not think this is fun if you have them guess how quickly they can put away their Lego. For more ways to make fun into math and math into fun, check out these 100 Math Activities and Resources.

Communicate via banana. Write a message or draw a picture on the skin of a banana using a toothpick or pencil. It’ll darken within an hour.

Paint without using your hands. Try taping the brush to a remote control toy, dangling it by a string, or rolling it across the paper. Or you might paint as this talented young artist does, by holding a paint brush in your mouth.

Make geodes out of eggshells and Epsom salts.

Start inventing. Save cardboard boxes and cardboard tubes of all sizes, along with string, rubber bands, lids, paper clips, yogurt cups, and so on. Distribute equal amounts of this “junk” so kids can build whatever they choose —- like a junk marble run or egg drop (from a window). Try a specific challenge, similar to the old TV series Junkyard Wars. Kids can invent sorters that send pennies down one chute and dimes down another, bridges that hold weight, catapults that toss ping-pong balls, or simply let inspiration hit.

Make a batch of Make Ahead Pizza with this recipe from Attainable Sustainable.

Help out the birds (and squirrels, they’re hungry too). Fill orange halves with birdseed, make a birdseed wreath, or coat pinecones with peanut butter and roll in birdseed. Keep the binoculars and bird guide close for bird watching. To attract even more birds during the winter, consider putting a heated bird bath on your deck or porch railing.

Play with tape. Rolls of painter’s tape or masking tape can spur new play ideas. Toy vehicles and action figures can travel along roadways made of tape stretched along on the floor. Overpasses, buildings, and other roadside features can be made from shoeboxes and other cardboard discards. Tape a giant checkerboard on the carpet, then use two sets of matching items for playing pieces. Tape a hard-surfaced floor to mark out hopscotch or skellzies . Stretch tape, sticky side out, across a doorway and take turns throwing crumpled paper at it to see if it sticks.

Make paper dolls (or paper dinosaurs, robots, elves, whatever) from stiff paper, connecting the limbs with brads. Then cut out accessories. Use large sheets of paper to draw backgrounds. These paper characters can act out stories with endless variations.

Camp in. Put up a tent in the living room, construct forts using couch cushions, or toss a sheet over a table. Such secret hideaways are a portal to make-believe. (A flashlight per kid really amps up the fun.)

Make the easiest homemade cheese. You need only one ingredient other than milk.

Build geometric sculptures. This simply requires toothpicks and miniature marshmallows. It’s a great way to make free-form sculptures while discovering some principles of geometry. As the marshmallows dry they’ll adhere ever more tightly to the toothpicks. After a day or two of drying the kids can decorate their sculptures with markers or paint if they’d like.

Make marshmallow shooters and target shoot with those leftover marshmallows.

Set up an obstacle course. Release some pent-up energy with a temporary indoor obstacle course. It might consist of a few chairs in a row to wriggle under, six plastic cups to run circles around, a squared off area to perform ten jumping jacks, then three somersaults down the hall before turning around to do it all in reverse. Older kids can set up a simple obstacle course for smaller kids. The adult in charge might want to put safety rules in place before the frenzy begins.

Learn to play a free instrument you already have. Really, it’s in your kitchen.

Go through old photos to see how places where your family came from have changed. You can pin them on Historypin.com, send them to the area’s historical society, or post them on social media tagged to the town.

Paint the tub. Just mix up some bathtub paints, then put kids in a (dry) tub to paint away. When they’re done they can clean it up and themselves with water.

Puzzle it out. Set out a big, somewhat complicated puzzle and leave it out in an area where everyone can work on over a period of days until it’s done.

Make Flarp. It’s said to have the same properties as Silly Putty, except it also farts. (You know this will be a hit.)

Get moving. Balance a book on each head and see how far kids can walk before it falls off, use pillowcases for gunny sack races, tape zigzag and dash lines on the floor to follow for a run and jump race, bat balloons back and forth, turn on the music and dance, call out animal names (snake! kangaroo! sloth!) and move as those animals move, tape bubble wrap to the floor and jump.

Mix up some elephant toothpaste.

Make a movie. Steven Spielberg started making movies as a kid so be sure to save your child’s film for posterity. Fame may hit. (Spielberg’s mother let him dump cans of cherry pie filling in the cupboards that slowly oozed out so he could film a horror movie. She probably wanted a free afternoon to watch her soaps, but there’s something to be said for creative license….)

Perform good deeds. Bake some goodies to share with a neighbor, local firefighters, or your librarians. For more family volunteering ideas, check 40 Ways to Volunteer, Toddler to Teen.

Draw on the windows. Use washable window markers to play tic-tac-toe or hangman. Or draw some sunshine.

Make fairies and superheroes out of wooden clothespins.

Snowy out there? Check out 15 Smarty Pants Ways to Enjoy Snow.

Goo around with homemade (and safe for toddler) slime.

Make your own family board game. Keep it simple for small ones, add twists and more complex questions for older kids. Together you can incorporate inside jokes, everyone’s names, favorite places around town, whatever your family decides.

Go postal. Consult 38 Unexpected Ways to Revel in Snail Mail to find out how you can find a pen pal, register for a mail exchange, mail strange objects without packing them in a box, and more.

Make Cosmic Suncatchers using glue, food coloring, and plastic lids.

Get your kids to predict the future. Better yet, write to your future selves. The kids may want to write to themselves as they’ll be in ten years or at your age. Don’t make this a child-only activity. Sit down and write to your future self too. You’ll want to include a description of an average day, list your favorite foods and activities, and imagine what you’ll be doing at that future date. Now seal those envelopes, write “Do Not Open Until ______” on the outside, and keep them somewhere you’ll remember.

Start throwing things. Juggling boosts brain development and reinforces a growth mindset. It’s also fun once you get the hang of it. Here’s more about juggling including how-tos.

Build a craft stick catapult.

Create sock puppets. Add features like ping-pong ball eyes, yarn hair, and a cardboard mouth. For more ideas grab a copy ofHow to Make Puppets With Children or 10-Minute Puppets. Once your puppets are ready, create a theater out of a large cardboard box, practice a few scenes, then put on a performance.

Play vocabulary-boosting dictionary games. Trust me, these are actually a lot of fun.

Record a broadcast. For inspiration, you might listen to a recording of an old radio show, like the original 1938 broadcast of War of the Worlds, then make your own audio story complete with narration and sound effects. Toss in some campy advertisements for extra fun.

Learn magic tricks via KidZone magic tricks and About.com’s easy card tricks for kids. You might also want to consult Knack Magic Tricks: A Step-by-Step Guide to Illusions, Sleight of Hand, and Amazing Feats and Kids’ Magic Secrets: Simple Magic Tricks & Why They Work.

Stage a treasure hunt. First, hide a prize. The prize doesn’t have to be a toy (it could be a snack or pack of crayons). Next, hide clues. For non-readers the clues can be rebus pictures, digital photos, or magazine cut-outs. For readers try riddles, short rhymes, or question-based clues. Each one should lead the child to a spot where the next clue is hidden. If you have more than one child let everyone search for clues and figure them out together. Or stage treasure hunts for each child in turn using the collaborative efforts of those who are waiting. Once kids are familiar with treasure hunts they can easily set them up on their own. To get you to play they may turn off your cell, hide it, and chortle gleefully while you track it down.

Create art out of salt and glue.

Slide on the steps. Flatten cardboard from a large box and place over stairs so kids can race cars up and down, roll balls, or pretend to be mountain-climbers. Couch pillows at the bottom help cushion sliding mountain climbers.

Teach traditional clapping games to small children.

Have a picnic. Yes, a picnic. Fling a tablecloth or beach towel on the floor. Eating on the floor may be novel enough but make sure the meal consists of picnic-y finger foods for real authenticity. You might want to fire up the grill to cook hot dogs and roast marshmallows. If you’re eating on a tiled floor in the kitchen consider amping up the fun by ending the picnic with a brief rainstorm you impose with a squirt bottle. Then again, maybe not. The kids will get you back some day.

Holding Together

January 28, 2016 / Laura Grace Weldon / 10 Comments

Hubble telescope poem

Too Little

Nose pressed in tiny squares

against the screen, I watch

casual laughing gods

walk home from school.

I envy their long legs

and glossy notebooks,

their unseen power

to unlock

words from shapes,

My sister drops A+ papers

and library books

on the speckled Formica table.

Asks me how many times

a butterfly flaps its wings.

Tells me I’m wrong.

Eats two cookies.

Announces we’re made up

of tiny things called cells,

made up of tinier things

called atoms,

also made of what’s smaller.

The kitchen walls stretch

to galaxy proportions,

the table a raft among stars.

I hold tight to my chair

and concentrate,

keeping my short legs,

my clumsy fingers,

the balloon of my body,

from dissolving into bits.

Laura Grace Weldon

Originally published by Litbreak.

Poetry Writing Hacks: 7 Playful Ways To Create Poetry

January 21, 2016May 25, 2016 / Laura Grace Weldon / 9 Comments

Spine poetry

I’m eager to liberate poetry from that stuffy good-for-you closet where it’s so often kept. That is, as long as I can do so playfully.

Each time I lead poetry-writing workshops I learn from students as young as eight years old. I see them write in a direct line from experience to meaning, use metaphor intuitively, and fiercely adore their own work. Our time together often looks like crafts or games, but it’s much more. We draw faces on peanut shells, glue them to cardboard, and write poems around them. We use bright permanent markers to adorn an old footstool or rocking chair with poems to make a classroom Inspiration Seat. We ask stones to tell us what they’ve seen over their long geologic history, then write down our impressions. We compose from the perspective of carrots as we bite, chew, and swallow them. We write on prayer flags to let poetry fly with the wind. We write and release poems in public places for others to find. It’s never, ever boring.

The following poetry writing hacks are fun to do with kids. But don’t forgot they’re great to do with anyone—your book group, at a family reunion, as a party game, even to liven up a meeting.

Stack up spine poetry

Ever noticed a stack of books with titles that, together, form unintentional wordplay? That’s spine poetry. Over 20 years ago, artist Nina Katchadourian started the Sorted Books Project, creating clusters of books that display clever idiosyncrasies and themes. (Some images were published under the title Sorted Books.)

To create your own spine poetry start by looking through books you have on hand and pull out titles that appeal to you. Then arrange them spine out to form poems. Take a photo to preserve your literary remix. If you’d like, share your images on Twitter as #spinepoem or #spinepoetry.

Play Exquisite Corpse

This absurdly pleasing game was dreamed up during the Parisian Surrealist Movement. There are a variety of approaches. Basically you start with a good-sized piece of paper. Each person writes a phrase or sentence, folds the paper to conceal lines from previous contributors, and passes it on to the next player with only the newest passage revealed. Keep going around until the paper is used up, then read the whole construction aloud.

Encounter unexpected poetry

Collect a variety of everyday objects. You might come up with an apple, peanut butter jar, mitten, shoe, flashlight, toy dinosaur, and nightlight. Then label each object by taping a word where it can’t be readily seen, perhaps folding the word to the inside or hiding it underneath. You don’t want the labels to read “apple” or “peanut butter jar.” Instead use unrelated yet evocative words like “beast,” “messenger,” “neck,” “song,” “intention,” and so on.

Each person picks one of the objects and writes a poem fragment leaving a blank for the object. If someone gets stuck, encourage them to simply write two or three adjectives and a verb. You might study the apple, then write, “Red, round _____ crisp on my tongue.” When the apple is turned over, a label reading “silence” transforms the poem fragment into: “Red round silence, crisp on my tongue.” Or you might pick up the flashlight, write, “High intensity _______ let’s me see where I’m going” only to find that it’s labeled “wrath.” Change word tense to fit the poem fragment as necessary. If inspired, turn the fragment into a longer poem.

Keep a perpetual poem going

There’s something freeing about adding to an evolving verse. There are no rules, only possibilities. Start it with a line stuck with magnets on a file cabinet or fridge door. Or paint a cupboard, wall, even your car with chalkboard paint — keeping chalk handy for anyone to use. Or cut strips of paper to leave out in a container next to a jar of markers and a box of poster tack, letting contributors stick the next line right on the wall. In my house we use dry erase markers on a laminated world map mounted in the kitchen.

Make collage poems

Collect words and phrases from all sorts of sources such as food containers, magazines, and junk mail. Provide heavy paper or mat board so each person can glue their word choices into a collage poem.

Write an erasure poem

Choose a page from a magazine, newspaper, or unwanted book, then blot out some of the words to reveal a new meaning. You can also make erasure poems digitally using the Erasures site via Wave Books. They provide classic texts and the e-tool for erasures. Check out Austin Kleon’s erasure poems in his book Newspaper Blackout.

Pull a poem from a bag

Romanian poet Tristan Tzara was denounced by his fellow Surrealists when he proposed making a poem by pulling words from a hat. In 1920 he wrote “Dada Manifesto on Feeble & Bitter Love” which contains these instructions:

To Make a Dadaist Poem

Take a newspaper (or magazine or other printed resource)
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article of the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that makes up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are – an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.

This article was originally published in Poet’s Quarterly.