Making Beautiful Things Out Of Dust

Two weeks ago when we met, we learned about Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Holocaust Remembrance Day is a day where we remember what Adoph Hitler did and all of the jews and all of the people who were in concentration camps, and many people died. 6 million Jewish people died, and over 5 million other people who were gay and lesbian, gypsies, people who had dark skin and people who opposed Hitler were all taken from their homes and put into concentration camps and many of them died.

It was bad. It was sorrowful time when many lives came to an end. Thankfully we can learn about this so that we can learn about this so we can recognize not to do things like this again.

One of the things we learned was that at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC there are thousands of ceramic tiles made by children who wanted to remember the Holocaust. We made our own memorial tiles out of salt dough.

Insert pictures of tiles here.


Today, when we met, we were studying different kinds of poetry. We listened and looked at poems by e e cummings, W.H. Auden and Rudyard Kipling, Shel Silverstein and A.A. Milne. We each took a favourite book of poetry and chose poems to read aloud.

Eleanor reads from A Light In The Attic by Shel Silverstein

Miranda reads from Where The Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

Sophia reads from Now We Are Six by A.A. Milne

We also talked about different forms of poetry. Sophia shared some haiku she had written when she was reflecting on a poster for some summer soccer, music and arts camps she had seen:

Music

Notes slur together
Kickdrums and snares keep the time.
This is our music. 

Soccer
Feet pounding in hope.
We know this is our game now.
Victory in view. 

Art
A dip in the pot.
Two strokes on a canvas page.
A new masterpiece. 

We spent some time learning about the poetry form of the cinquain. A cinquain is a five-line poem and it starts with a noun, then 2 adjectives, then three words ending with -ING, then a four word phrase and then a synonym for the first word (your topic). We then spent some time together on how we felt when we learned about the Holocaust two weeks before. We had been reflecting during the morning on how a poem can paint a picture in our minds with just a few words, or how poetry can convey sadness, anger or humour and fun. We spent some time brainstorming ideas from our recollections.  These are the cinquains that the three of us (Miranda, Sophia and Eleanor) wrote together.

Soldier
Brave, courageous
Hoping, caring, wanting
Fighting for their rights
Warrior.

Holocaust
Horrible devastation
Killing, stopping, hating
Lives frozen in time
Lost

Remembrance
Vivid nightmare
Learning, weeping, staying
We say never again
Recollection