Slice of Life #22: Day 10: Paint Chip Poetry

For the month of March, each day I am writing and posting a slice of my life, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. 

Slice of Life #22: Day 10: 

Paint Chip Poetry

Have you ever heard of Paint Chip Poetry? I must have been inspired from a Slice of Life fellow blogger last year (or even the year before). I bought it and never tried it... until yesterday. 

It's marketed as a game, but I think that it is really about word play. You can play by yourself or with others. I played solo.

The concept is fairly easy. You select twelve paint chip cards from the box. Then you pick a prompt. You play with the words. Finally, you share out what you created. You can use the words, apply the colors to your creation, or add your own words. I like that you can use as few or as many of the paint chips as you like. 

The first time I played I came up with this:

I could see doing this again and perhaps using this with my students or in a future Literary Club meeting.

In what ways have you used Paint Chip Poetry?

March Slice of Life Challenge Day 3: Juicy Words

For the month of March, each day I am writing and posting a slice of my life, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. 

March Slice of Life Challenge Day 3: Juicy Words

You might be a teacher's kid....if you play word games on walks and car rides like my kids and I do. 

I'm not sure how this "game" started. Perhaps one of them learned it at school and taught it to us all. I really don't recall. Regardless, my children and I have been playing this for at least five years. We call it the word game. 

How does one play the word game? Glad you asked. Someone begins with a word. The next person must come up with a word that begins with the last letter of the word the person before him or her said. For example, if I started with the word slice, the next person would need to say a word that began with the letter e, like elephant. The next person would need to come up with a word that began with the letter t, like timber. Then the next person would determine a word that started with r, like recycle. 

Easy, right?

Last night, as we took our dogs for their nightly stroll, we kept this game going for at least thirty minutes. Since I have no idea if this rule has any official rules, our family came up with the following rules: You cannot repeat a word within the same game, No proper nouns, and Words in other languages count.

We hadn't played this game in a few months. The teacher in me was delighted to hear how my children's vocabulary has expanded since we last played. My son used many science words like exoskeleton, osmosis, and biome. My daughter also used words she's studying in social studies like judicial, executive, senate, and colonize. 

In general, our family seems to select words that end in the letter e often. Sometimes this causes squabbles when someone runs out of words that begin with e. 

This game doesn't involve any kind of points. It doesn't have a winner or a loser. Perhaps we are all just a little nerdy, especially when it comes to words. 

One of my favorite moments of last night's game was when my son was thinking of a word that began with y. My daughter and I both yelled out suggestions like yam and yellow; he retorted, "those aren't juicy enough!"

"What do you mean by juicy?" I asked my thirteen-year-old son.

"A long and interesting word," He replied. My daughter nodded. 

This made me grin. I will have to remember to think of more juicy words next time!