Welcome January+ Raising Little Shoots along with Doodlewash Art Challenge

 

Our favour shop has these moon cards: https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/ofbeeandbearshop 

We discovered Raising Little Shoots last school term and we truly adore them. We will begin following Lynn's blog: https://raisinglittleshoots.com/blog/  our first week goes from January 2-8 and the topic is Winter Sky Week.

To begin our journey exploring this topic we listened to a poem by Robert Frost called Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening: https://youtu.be/1sWcq2-ZA5o  or you can read it below:

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost (born 1874 died 1963)  

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

This is a beautiful rendition: https://youtu.be/ZQhIZhwoj14

This poem helped us imagine what it would be like to be on a horse travelling along in the forest during a snowfall, perhaps with a small lantern, and the sounds and feelings that being under and in a winter sky would provoke. We found a lovely free lesson created by Ashley Moon (2019) on the Teach this Poem website: https://poets.org/lesson-plan/teach-poem-stopping-woods-snowy-evening-robert-frost  Barron read the poem and so did I. Our answers to the questions in the lesson: We feel that the woods is symbolic of a conquest and the mood of the poem is subtle and natural. The picture of the wagon on a an open trail with trees around it matches the poem rather perfectly.  The speakers promise might be to get to the end of his journey. He might have repeated the final lines twice to motivate himself to remind himself to keep on pursuing to not give up.

Barron did a lovely job studying and analyzing the poem. He was able to learn a new skill, how to figure out how long someone enjoyed their life by knowing the year the person died and subtracting it from the year the person was born, for example to calculate how many yeas Robert Frost lived you perform the following equation-> 1963-1874=89. Robert Frost lived 89 years of his life.  We were not sure how to define the word frost so Barron looked up in the student dictionary version at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/frost#kidsdictionary  and found it to be defined as the temperature that causes freezing or a covering of tiny ice crystals on a cold surface.

We learnt a bit more about who Robert Frost was from this web source: https://kids.britannica.com/students/article/Robert-Frost/274445 

We found that he was an American who was born in San Francisco on March 26, 1874 and died on January 29, 1963. His father died when he was 11. He went to live with his Grandparents in Massachusetts. Robert married his high school sweetheart in 1895, her name was Elinor White. In 1900 his grandfather gave him a small farm in New Hampshire. He studied at Dartmouth College and Harvard University and was able to teach. On the farm that his grandfather gave him he tended to the land however he was not successful. He tried for 11 years.  He often found inspiration from walks around his farm. It took him 20 years to be able to make a living as a poet, however when he did he was successful. He won the Pulitzer prizes in 1923, 1930, 1936, and in 1942. He eventually became a poetry consultant to the Library of Congress (a job we now call a poet laureate consultant.) He also received the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 and President John F. Kennedy invited him to recite his poem The Gift Outright in 1961 at his inauguration (the formal admission of someone to office.)

Learning about the man, mapping his life journey from one side of the map to the other, taking part in a lesson about one of his winter poems lead us into a lovely How to Paint session from Art Classes for Kids on YouTube of a winter night sky where the teacher and the student each paint a version of the night sky. Barron painted the Blue night sky shown and I painted the black night as in the video. Please join us and support this lovely art creator's page: https://youtu.be/Te7l02l9HQk 

We found three lovely poems that would suite this art activity by Robert Frost called Birches, A Late Walk, and Fragmentary Blue. These can be enjoyed on the free podcasts read by Becky Crackle from Ohio: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/selected-poems-by-robert-frost/id903845345  We have included one of them below, to read if you would like, that is rather delightful:

B  Birches by Robert Frost 

When I see birches ben to left and right

Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.

But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay

As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them

Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning

After a rain. They click upon themselves

As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored

As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.

Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells

Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—

Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away

You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.

They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,

And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed

So low for long, they never right themselves:

You may see their trunks arching in the woods

Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground

Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair

Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.

But I was going to say when Truth broke in

With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm

I should prefer to have some boy bend them

As he went out and in to fetch the cows—

Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,

Whose only play was what he found himself,

Summer or winter, and could play alone.

One by one he subdued his father's trees

By riding them down over and over again

Until he took the stiffness out of them,

And not one but hung limp, not one was left

For him to conquer. He learned all there was

To learn about not launching out too soon

And so not carrying the tree away

Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise

To the top branches, climbing carefully

With the same pains you use to fill a cup

Up to the brim, and even above the brim.

Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,

Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

And so I dream of going back to be.

It’s when I’m weary of considerations,

And life is too much like a pathless wood

Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs

Broken across it, and one eye is weeping

From a twig’s having lashed across it open.

I'd like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.

May no fate willfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:

I don’t know where it's likely to go better.

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44260/birches

We found this fun activity to begin the New Year, 30 day art prompts. It is free and you can find the daily quest to draw at: https://doodlewash.com/january-2023-art-drawing-watercolor-challenge/