Sunday, November 20, 2011

Ten Days of Thanks-Giving: Time to Share Your Thank-Yous (and THANKUs)

Today is the official start of our Ten Days of Thanks-Giving! As JoAnn explained on Friday, this is the first of what we hope will be an annual event, taking place November 20-30.

It all started with Esther's post about a new poetry form she invented: the THANKU, a thank-you note in haiku form. After her post, we talked about how there's so much negativitiy and bad news in the world, and how it might be uplifting to do a series of thank-you posts about people and things for which we're grateful. We'll start that series tomorrow. Meanwhile, we came up with the idea for sponsoring the Ten Days of Thanks-Giving: an opportunity for our readers and everyone in the Kidlitosphere to share their own thank-yous.  We encourage you (and your students!) to write a thank-you note of 25 words or less, as a poem or prose. Then share your thank-you with us in one of three ways:
  1. Post it as a comment to any of our blog posts from today through Nov. 30.
  2. Send it to us via email to teachingauthors at gmail dot com, with "Thanks-Giving" as the subject. Depending on the number of emails we receive, we'll share some of your notes in our posts.
  3. Post it on your own blog and then share the link either via a comment or email. On November 30, I'll post a round-up of all the links we receive.
If you're feeling creative, try your hand at writing a THANKU.  Esther first wrote about the form here. And Lori Degman used the form to write a lovely reply in the comments:

Thank you Esther H.
for sharing yourself with us.
You've touched countless lives!!

Or you can try one of the poetry forms JoAnn shared on Friday.
Or just write a simple thank-you note.

I'll be sharing my thank-you when I post next week. Meanwhile, know that I'm especially thankful for my five amazingly talented co-bloggers, for all our wonderful readers, and for all the fantastic Kidlit bloggers I've come to know since we started this blog.

Happy Thanks-Giving!
Carmela 

7 comments:

Tammy said...

I love your idea! I blogged about your challenge on my blog. www.klingercafe.com Thank you for hosting!
Tammy

Carmela Martino said...

Thanks for helping to spread the word, Tammy.

Margo Dill said...

This is a great idea and just gave me an idea for when I post on Thursday. I too will be linking to your blog and I'm going to try a THANKU. That Esther--she has the best ideas!! :)

Brenda said...

Love this idea! I blogged my THANKUs over at: http://brendaferber.blogspot.com/2011/11/thanku.html

Unknown said...

Ester, thank you for Thankus! You'll find them here as well: rhymesntime.blogspot.com and thewritersvibe.blogspot.com

Happy Harvest!

Margo Dill said...

I wrote a thanku!

http://margodill.com/blog/2011/11/24/im-thankful-for/

Esther Hershenhorn said...

Thanks to our readers and writers of Thankus for sharing in our celebration.
I loved clicking on the links to read everyone’s delicious words.

FYI and Just-so-you-know: I did not “invent” this Haiku poetic form that expresses gratitude.
What I did do in brainstorming my October 20 NCTE Day On Writing blogpost was (1) think Thank You Note, (2) think Haiku, (3) leap to re-read Andrew Clements' DOGKU and Bob Raczka’s GUYKU, then (4) combine (1) and (2) in an Aha! Moment and label my result a THANKU.

I did indeed Google to see if others before me had done the same and found zippo. (I’m quite the honest person.)

I obviously did not type in the right words because I’ve since learned that in 2002 someone had written and named a similar form.

The Good News is: lots of TeachingAuthors readers are serving up Thankus between November 20 and November 30!

So, Thanku!