C is for Case - Dictionary Hike

C is for CASE

Photo by Amy LV

Students - Here we are on Day #3 of writing from pointing-at-a-dictionary-page...a Dictionary Hike!  Today's word is CASE, and the particular CASE I pointed to was "a container to hold or protect something" - not a detective case, or a case of the measles, but an object-holding case such as a pencil case or suitcase.

My first inclination was to go with pencil case, as I have always loved school supplies. But then we went for a morning walk.  And up in our family's little ol' moonshine pit, the baby tadpoles are starting to hatch.  I dearly wanted to write about them...and so their eggs became CASES in my mind.  Little clear cases.

Later in the afternoon, our son Henry (10) took about a hundred pictures of the hatching tadpoles.  When he got to the water with  his camera, they were all hatching!  Within those few hours, the little jelly eggs had broken apart, and tadpoles swam in and out and all about.

Tadpoles Hatching

Photo by Henry LV

Tadpoles Eating Gel

Photo by Henry LV

Tadpole Swims in Leaves and Silt

Photo by Henry LV

Tadpoles Against Log

Photo by Henry LV

Writing today's poem, I tried something else that's a little different for me too.  It's quite descriptive because I wanted to help someone who doesn't live hear a moonshine pit really see these tadpoles.  They are so cute, so magical as they swim out.  I should write a poem about that too...

Lesson of today: If you don't know what to write, go outside!  The world will tell you!

This poem is written in rhyming couplets.  What do you notice about the syllables?  Did you notice that the last pair of rhymes are really only near-rhymes?  That's something I'd like to get better at, and Janet Wong mentions this in her post over at Sharing Our Notebooks this week.

If you visit Sharing Our Notebooks, you will be able to hear Janet talk all about how she (doesn't) keep notebooks, the way she revisits old ideas, and you (like me) will learn some great revision strategies for your own poems.  You can also leave a comment on that post through Thursday to be entered in a drawing for four of Janet's books, generously donated by Janet!

You can win these books over at Sharing Our Notebooks!

Each day of this project, my new writing friend Lisa will be hosting a haiku for the day's word at her blog.  You might wish to follow her progress...I cannot wait to see what she does with the same words!  Check it out at Lisa's Poem of the Week.

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