We are only a week away from Thanksgiving, so today's Thoughtful Thursday offers up a hodgepodge of poems celebrating the food, festivities and fun of this holiday. We start with Elizabeth Alexander's "Butter", a delightful ode to the spread which makes everything taste better. Bet you can't read this without getting hungry! Next is the moving and soulful "Perhaps [...]
GCP has been writing about how to talk with our children about mass shootings for too many years. Sadly, we are running an edited version of this post again below. Our children are learning to live in a world where schools and other familiar places we all visit can be targets, and we have to help them cope [...]
Today's Thoughtful Thursday continues the celebration of Veteran's Day with two poems written by African American veteran Yusef Komunyakaa (b. 1947) about his Vietnam War service. Komunyakaa served in the United States Army from 1969 to 1970 as a correspondent; he was the managing editor of the Southern Cross during the Vietnam war, for which he was awarded a [...]
Ever wonder where to find high quality, teacher-tested educational materials online to help your child master a tough subject or learn more about a subject he or she loves? You may soon need look no further than the site from which you can get just about anything else: Amazon.com. Amazon Education has just launched "Amazon Ignite", an educational materials [...]
Today’s Thoughtful Thursday post, as it falls on Halloween, is dedicated to a series of delightfully sinister “Little Willie” poems. These poems detail the antics of Little Willie, a boy who carries out one devilish deed after another. Fans of Adams Family style fiendish humor will find these rhyming verses particularly fun. "Little Willie"poetry is first attributed to the [...]
GCP has been off the grid for a few weeks but we just had to pop back in today to say Run, Don't Walk, to see the great new movie HARRIET which is opening in theaters nationwide tomorrow, November 1!!! We saw it when it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, and it is an exciting and inspirational film [...]
Is your son or daughter an inspiring poet? A good writer? A talented artist? Time to enter a contest and show the world these talents! Today's Thoughtful Thursday showcases a few contests your creative children may want to enter. Click on the links for more details. National Poetry Month Poster Contest: Students in grades 9 through 12 can enter [...]
Did you know that National Hispanic Heritage Month began on September 15th and ends on October 15th? And why, you may ask, does this celebration of the histories, cultures and contributions of Americans whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America start in the middle of one month and end in the middle of the [...]
Our boys and girl are back in school! Today's Thoughtful Thursday offers some inspirational words and poems to celebrate the start of their new school year. The poem "Workshop" by Billy Collins (b. 1941) presents a delightfully irreverent analysis of itself within the poem and will appeal to all who spent time analyzing poetry in high school English. In [...]
I spent this past weekend at a business conference which included presentations from several very dynamic and accomplished women. These were some impressive and powerful women, many of whom mentioned their children as they talked about their lives. It was great to hear their stories. I must confess, however, that as I listened to them I also heard a [...]