Day 5 - July 11th

It was a great last day - receiving our anthologies, and celebrating our accomplishments with parents, relatives, new and old friends.

Here's what happened today:

We wrote and talked about some of our favorite books, and then with a partner, wrote parodies of Abbot and Costello's "Who's on first?"

Pizza...

We met up with parents and other guests:

And listened to each other read pieces from our anthology.

We also entertained them with performances of our "Who's On First?" parodies:

We had a wonderful last day. We will miss you all, and hope to be in touch in with all of you again soon!
This blog will remain on the internet, and was, in part, intended to provide a way for everyone to stay connected.
Keep writing, everyone! And keep being the creative and brilliant people that you are!!!

Day 4 - July 10th

Wow, what a great day!!!!

First, we had the privilege of viewing Harrison's incredible photos.

We did tons of writing and editing for our anthology pieces.

After lunch, we received our Inkstains 2008 T-shirts.

Then we had these really amazing guest speakers and spoken word performers. They gave us a great writing prompt to create "Let me be" poems, and many of us read our writing too.

Finally, we had an unbelievably silly writing activity called "Snowball." It sure did inspire us to write:

Snowball!!!

CHAOS!

It got sillier and sillier...

and sillier and sillier...

Some people laughed so hard they cried. Some laughed so hard their tongues turned blue.

And then we read the stories we'd written collectively...the ridiculous stories that resulted from these snowballs. Nobody could keep a straight face.

What a fun, inspiring, and productive day!


Here's a quick first draft of Sarah's version of the Let Me Be poem:

Let me be writing
always
without fear...
Let me be without conscious or scrutiny
Let me just be writing.

Le me write sometimes with no purpose in mind
and other times with omnipresence;
sometimes for my audience,
other times as my audience,
without judgment or hierarchy.

Let me be a microscope,
binoculars,
a magnifying glass.
Let me see the other side of my words.
Let me be wisdom. Let me go back.
Let me be courage.
Let me be memory.
Let me be writing.

Day 3 - July 9

Another phenomenal day at Inkstains 2008 - tons of writing, both inside and outside, more geese encounters, and a very silly time with the 826Michigan guest speakers. Well...the pictures speak for themselves:

Day 2 - July 8

Today was another FANTASTIC day at Inkstains 2008!

We started out our Writing Marathon near the pond...

We each found our own spot for inspiration...

Our next stop was outside of Pray-Harrold, a classroom building:

We found many interesting spots...

And we continued writing by the really cool sculpture in the courtyard:

We came back to our room to share some of the writing from our marathon:

And had a Schoolyard Adventure infested with massive amounts of geese!!





























These geese were NOT SHY! And a little feisty!

We decided the ducks were far cuter, and less inclined to hiss, than the geese.

We kept writing, and tried to get away from the bold and distracting geese...
...but those geese were persistent! Maybe they want to be writers!

We turned our Schoolyard Adventure ideas into descriptive paragraphs and poems:

And found the exceptional view from our classroom to be a great writing tool:


We were extra hungry from writing so much during our marathon, and lunchtime was openly welcomed.

Some went on a food rampage, so the rumors go. There were whispers about some of us going a bit bonkers over extra casadias and a snack Maddie deemed a "Heart attack in the form of a nut."
Olivia's tongue speaks volumes...


A view of lunch from above!


Next we got to sit in a really cool room...
...where we had the coolest guest speaker, Professor Heather Neff!

How excited we were that at the end of her incredibly inspiring conversation with us, she listened to and critiqued some of our writing!


Here's a few quotes from our time with Professor Neff:

"My teachers are trying to relive their inner child." - Jack (in response to why teachers assign fairy tales)


"If I get in trouble, I don't tell my mom. I write it down and put it next to her bed." - Rashika


"Paper doesn't laugh at you when you put your ideas on it." - Emily


"When you are at school, write for your teachers. When you aren't, write for yourself." - Professor Neff


It was another amazing day of camp, and we owe it to all of you for being so much fun and such fabulous writers! See you all tomorrow...