This has been a journey to try to teach as much as possible in under three weeks while trying to finish setworks and other tasks.  I have tried fameworks for writing poetry with figures of speech - poems like the Langston Hughes:

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow

I asked the girls to use this framework, inserting two of their own metaphors.  In retrospect we needed to go back and revise some pretty indifferen and even weak similes. 

We also used the exercise suggested by Jacqui in resonse to the image of the woman under a burden:

Look at her hands
Raw, knobbly and calloused.
Look at her face
Like a bean skin soaked in brine

Once again they had to create their own similes as well as the appropriate adjectives. 

In a recent Taste magazine I saw an entry (in a coffee shop, so I do not have the original).  The woman interviewed was asked for five things that she loves.  She listed five favourites and an explanation for each.  She included her chef's knife and how she wants to take it when she goes away - a woman after my own heart.  When we rent a house in Plett, I take my knife!  She also listed her pasta-making machine - it has been passed down to her from her friend's Italian granny.  I told my students that my most precious possession is my great-grand mother's silver teapot with an inscription on it from three of her children on the occasion of her 25th wedding anniversary.  I love it because I know that many of my forbears have admired it and touched it.  Some of my students think that I am touched!  But they love items from their past - rings, a rosary from a grandmother, and other pieces of memorabilia.  One loves her vintage clothes, while another loves her 12 eye liners -   she has a passion for them! Yet another has a penchant for bright red lipstick.

We then smashed on to recording first sentences from books we have loved.  They were asked to write down five.  This went very well and they were read and enjoyed in groups.  One of my favourites is Nick's words in the Great Gatsby: 'In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.' He then goes on to tell his son to remember that not everyone is fortunate enough to have had the opportunities that he has had.  If I had $ 10 for every time I quote this advice to my daughters and students, I would be able to go and visit my daughrter in New York!

I have done most of these exercises myself to show interest and to test the system.  I must admit that I work a lot harder than most, if not all of my students!  Am I too enthusiastic?  Possibly. I do not wish to digress but I fear that I put one of my children off reading completely with my enthusiasm.  Where did I go wrong, I ask as a distressed parent. 

Our final step is to start a timeline in preparation for the piece on myself.  Step one was to chart the major events and then to highlight one. Step two was to write a piece of dialogue on the event, to choose a symbol, characters and a colour associated with it.  Everyone has written something about her name - background, meaning, nickname.  This they enjoyed.  Finally we are going to write our story - To know me, you must know my story. 

Jacqui and other friends of the writing course due to meet on August 4 - here I am: late but getting there at the last minute.  Please God I can find my place tomorrow to write anothe exciting episode!