Update: My “Send me fruit stories” button no longer exists because my months of writing fruit stories are almost over. And thank goodness for that. I am feeling about plum out of inspiration.
A wise person once said, “It takes a village to decorate a classroom.” (Or something like that.) My “village” really came through for me this year.
Long before I even had ideas, Holly offered that I could use her Cricut for classroom décor if I wanted.
When I asked Kayleen for ideas, she immediately started giving brilliant suggestions, the second of which was this already well-developed “Fruits of the Spirit” theme. I’m a little suspicious that she spent hours lying awake preparing the perfect idea in case I asked this question, but she claims it came to her on the spot. I do believe her. (Somehow, I don’t think having 8-month-old twins gives one a lot of spare time to brainstorm ideas for their sister’s classroom.)
Ricky agreed to this “fun little project” when I asked him if he wanted to draw fruit characters for me. His drawings never disappoint, and soon I had nine of the cutest fruit characters complete with tennis shoes.
I projected Ricky’s drawings to trace large fruits for the walls. Holly spent significant time learning new printing/cutting modes on her machine and then helped me cut out all the small fruits.
Mom stuck by me in some of the fruit-tracing and helped me put up all the finished products.
I’m grateful to these people every day when I enter my classroom and am greeted by my happy fruits.
One way that I want to develop my writing skills this year is to write stories about my fruit characters (each of whom represent a fruit of the Spirit) to read to my second-graders.
To give myself some accountability to write a story for each fruit (one per month), I plan to make an email group to send my stories to.
If you want to be a second-grader again, or have a second-grader in your life, or if you like children’s stories or editing or giving feedback, or if for any other reason you would like to receive my stories, let me know! You can sign up to receive the rough drafts of my fruit stories by entering your name and email address in the form on this page and hitting the “Send me fruit stories!” button.
I would be honoured (and intimidated) to send my stories to you.
If you sign up to receive the stories, I welcome your feedback! I want to learn, and if you have suggestions for how I can improve my stories, I want to hear them. If you don’t send me critique, I will assume my writing is already awesome.
In all seriousness, though, there is no obligation to send feedback.
Suki, Cayo, Paxton, Dillan, Keeva, Agatha, Truman, Gareth, and Damin (the fruits) are looking forward to meeting you!
Realizing Provision 