Spring Scavenger Hunt

Walked home from Trader Joe's with my camera last week. I only spent an extra thirty minutes stopping to look for spring in every other front yard.

On Cinquains

I was motivated to write the cinquain below because of two days spent substituting in a third grade classroom. They had to write one. I carefully went through the form with them: simple subject here, adjectives there. We all made up a class example together. The subject line was 'dogs'. Then about two thirds of the class wrote theirs about a pet. I heard one kid say to another, "Penguins aren't pets. You can't write that!". I then tried to explain that a cinquain is just a poem and the the subject can be about anything, even an idea.

Most of them totally zoned out because

a) It was almost spring break
b) I wasn't the regular teacher
c) They already did the assignment anyway.

Also a bunch of them copped lines from the class poem. Apparently several liked the final line where we equated 'dog' to 'small brown wolf', so they included that. I would guess this is because they are used to taking other people's graphics off the web and using them in their reports. The photo below is my own. After I wrote the poem I went outside and looked around for a good shot. That wisteria smells delicious right now.

I never did figure out what I smelled as I walked down to school!