Sing and Speak, Read and Play!

SING AND SPEAK, READ AND PLAY!

Per chi è pensato?
“Sing and Speak, Read and Play” è pensato per i bimbi in età da 5-7 anni: sarà una bella esperienza di apprendimento della lingua inglese con l’obiettivo di trasmettere ai giovani allievi l’amore per la lingua.
Come saranno organizzate le lezioni?
I bambini potranno frequentare due lezioni alla settimana (ogni martedì e giovedì), della durata di circa un’ora, dal 4 giugno al 25 luglio (per un totale di 16 lezioni). Il programma del corso sarà supportato da canzoni, giochi, attività manuali e storie scelto accuratamente per i bimbi di questa età ed eseguito da una docente madrelingua. Ogni settimana un nuovo tema:
A giugno, scopriremo:
  • v  Colori e fiori (giocheremo con i colori della natura)
  • v  In cucina (frutta e verdure, pane e biscotti)
  • v  I nostri amici animali (nomi e versi degli animali)
  • v  Che bella la musica (strumenti musicale)

e a luglio:
  • v  Quanti sono? (numeri e giochi di conteggio)
  • v  Muoviamoci! (braccia, spalle, ginocchia e piedi – tutti in movimento)
  • v  Com’è il tempo? (pioggia, neve, sole e nuvole)
  • v  Vacanze estive (in montagna o sulla spiaggia, come fare la valigia?)

Verranno utilizzate storie, attività manuali, canzoni e giochi. Le lezioni saranno prevalentemente a carattere comunicativo; il metodo d’apprendimento rifletterà il modo con il quale i bambini apprendono la propria madrelingua.
Orari giugno-luglio 2013:
  • Ø  giugno (4-27): Ogni martedì e giovedì dalle 16:30 alle 17:30
  • Ø  luglio (2-25): Ogni martedì e giovedì dalle 16:30 alle 17:30

Costo per bambina/bambino:
  • Ø  8 lezioni (solo giugno o solo luglio) – €80,00 in due rate di €40,00
  • Ø  16 lezioni (iscrizione per entrambi i mesi, una lezione gratuita!) – €150,00 in tre rate di €50,00

Dove:
  • Ø  via Statuto 14, Gemonio (VA)

L’iscrizione è limitata. Per iscriversi ai corsi “Sing and Speak, Read and Play” o per ulteriori informazioni si prega di contattarci a bmcclellan.lapoeta@gmail.com o di telefonare Bonnie McClellan allo 0332 601 690. 

Mothers and Daughters: Red Square (a map of our mother’s closet circa 1972)

315860_2337693210185_6443122_n

We will know her by her symbolic attributes;
In her image neither lily nor byzantine purple signify.
We will note that in the hard-drawn felt-tip icon of the Mother God
She is ever shown wearing Red high heels.

Some colored squares in our territory’s mapped legend fade,
Re-worn and illegible as old confetti on a wet asphalt street
tracked back by our insistent, diminishing feet.
Others cling, vibrant in the hanging dark:
stripes of light cotton voile:
one turquoise,
one lime
green.

In more contemporary images we will note:
The hard-drawn, felt-tip Icon of the Mother God
Wears Red high heels. Her dress, now codified,
is the color of the first oak leaf in spring; however

it lacks the turquoise
of Texas’ summer skies.
This color cooled has flown
from our mother’s dress,
to hold light purchase only
in our daughters’ eyes.

by Bonnie McClellan

Wool in Italy – What’s new?

I’ve realized that I was blogging alot about knitting and wool, so I’ve moved that over to my new blog:
come take a look and find out about:
So, if you’re interested in receiving my latest knitting, spinning and wool-working news and inspirations, please stop by at Wool in Italy and click the ‘follow’ box to your right on the home page.
Meanwhile, the rest of life in Italy will keep posting here so stay tuned for recipes, art, random thoughts, gardening and other things going on at the house.
Thanks for reading and happy wool-working to you woolies out there.

Mothers and Daughters: Intermittent Signal (Non c’è campo)

field

My sister’s voice
shattered across
an inconsistent, oscillating
field
stammering in and out
of being
then gone
but imprinted
on the field
not of you are here
but of you are this.

lack

My grandmother’s pearl
earrings oscillating
one black pearl one
the color of cream
thick with fat.
– she moves her head, lifting
her hands to speak
two palms holding up
a weightless field –
her lips move and issue
the sound of glass
sublimed

expansion

I am made up of stars that are not, or
the container of their memory:
fireworks cracking the saint’s day
of the insomniac night
I became not always
the one who leaves
but the one who is (for her)
the fertile field/the constant star.

dispersion

How long until she knows
what it is to be the glass
flowing into flatness,
ceding the vertical,
breaking the light,
into water?

by Bonnie McClellan

"non c'è campo" photograph by Bonnie Broussard

a note on the title: Italians often refer to a place in which there is no reception for mobile devices as “un posto dove non c’è campo” – although the word campo translates as field (with the same degree of semantic density as field in English) it also implies range or depth of field.

Mothers and Daughters: Terra Cotta

Peering into the narrow compact
Rectangle reflecting back:
The rumpled face of a woman
……….whose father is dying;
……….whose mother will die.

Under chin skin slags, begins
To give up the ghost of a woman
……….whose skin was once full
……….and firm as an egg.

Now, like a plastic bag full of slip,
When squeezed in the right places takes on
Then, temporary grace of a woman
……………who will also die;

Falling away into potsherds, unfired.
Falling away into sand, into clay.

by Bonnie McClellan

Tic - photo: Bonnie Broussard, sculpture: Matthew Broussard

Mothers and Daughters: Communicating Vessels

One year when the awakened plane trees
find themselves struck yellow in the night,
there will be nothing left of me but
a memory in your hands as they pull
wet laundry from the spun drum or
open the window’s case –
inviting October’s last, warm breath
to communicate the dust
between one room
and another.

by Bonnie McClellan

Reflections VI, D – Mother’s Day: by Tom McClellan

A guest post for Easter from writer, IPM poet and essayist Tom McClellan

Dear Son,

You’ve done yourself proud at Officer Training School.  Acing your course work and being the first to be selected Group Leader—Congratulations!  You said you want to adopt me as your second father—You make me proud to think of you as a son – “My Son the Marine, Warrant Officer Burton.” That has a nice ring to it.

Official spring began two months ago, about the time real spring had peaked in an explosion of azalea blooms along Turtle Creek.  Now spring continues cool and wet through the Ram and into the Fish.

Now shines the sun of spring,

And honeysuckle’s scent

Soaks air washed by the rain.

The proof of God’s as plain

As sunlight through the leaf

Exposing cell and vein.

…

Your mother and I had our first date on Mother’ Day, 1979.  We ate at a Mexican restaurant and saw the movie “All That Jazz.”

Over the next year Carolyn became the Home I so much needed.  We were married, as you probably remember, about one week before our first grandchild, your daughter, arrived.

Before we were married, Carolyn asked me if I was in love with her.  Being in the process of recovery from a passionate relationship that had ended in divorce and, for me, a trip to the madhouse, I had no trust in being in love.  I told her, “No, but give me five years and I’ll fall in love with you.”

It didn’t take that long though.  We went to a dance some months later, and the memory of Carolyn in a sunshine yellow dress with flowered wrap—she’d made both herself—head thrown back, abandoned to the music—That is a memory I’ll carry with me into eternity.

In His Love,

Tom

This piece was excerpted from Mr. McClellan’s memoir: “Reflections from Mirror City”.

Orphan Poetry or Paradise Lost: IV. The Vinegar Scripture

The Vinegar Scripture

I am blue in the face
words unexhaled;
sky’s edge, distant,
cracks and curls.
Ozone’s filthy fingers
ruck parched dusk.
I drink;
water and vinegar
think of Christ
Roman soldiers,
rough sponge,
cracked lip:
“E’-li, E’-li, la’-ma sa-bach’-tha-ni?”
After that
this same
amber thick, sour smell
slaps against our Savior’s sense.
Now he’s off –
Hard business for him to harrow hell;
Hard business for me,
just sitting still.

To listen to the poem, click on the player below.

Caulonian Suite: IV. Venerdi Santo / Good Friday

Venerdi Santo,
Cristo morirà ancora
come ha fatto ogni anno
poichè Dio sa quando.*

—-

They held a New Orleans Funeral for Jesus:
Woodwinds, brass and the big bass drum.
After awhile the rain began to come;
Parishioners popped up their umbrellas,
Madonna was sacked to protect the stars
Spangling perfect electrified hair that
Should have been disheveled in grief.

Christ: unable to awaken, trapped in an opiate nightmare,
Pallid, couch-ridden, sick with flowers,
Widow-borne through the streets on a lacy bier.

Mary: politely dolorosa, her face more composed than that
Of the old mother dressed in black
Hanging out of the window to watch Her pass,
Baptizing the parading crowd with tears
Thrown out like old wash water.

What is left clean and what is soiled?

The sorrow of sin shifts from house to street
To be tracked back in on the slack-shod feet
Of grandchildren, dogs and beggared questions,
Salved in the last moment with words and oil:

quidquid deliquisti / in all that you have failed.

***********************************
*Good Friday,
Christ will die again
As he’s done every year
Since God knows when.