Booing and how we did it

The Yokell family wrote a delightful collage that featured a family practice called: “booing.” I want to share it with you and then you can also read the way their family went about writing. Their longer collage included a piece about All Saint’s Day which is not included on this blog but is referenced in their “how we did it” notes.

Each of these testimonials are meant to encourage you to think outside the box with your own brood. Remember, writing is mostly dialog, musing, reading, thinking, talking some more and finally committing those thoughts to paper or screen. When the words are located outside of your head, play with them. Move the words around, add new ones, cross out weak and vague terms. Upgrade “B” words to “A+” ones. Try moving the end to the beginning and see if that adds an element of surprise. PLAY~ The Yokells know how. 🙂

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Booing has always been exciting, but especially this year because we were extremely close to being caught. I could hardly catch my breath. My eyes were wide as pumpkins; my teeth chattered, my body shook and my heart pounded as fast as a racehorse running. The person we booed came all the way down to the street, in view of where we were hiding, and peered straight at us, but didn’t see us. A pillar concealed me, and David hid up against the wall. He was even closer to being spotted than I was because he was in plain site, while just my head was poking around the pillar.

What is booing? Booing is where we go to a neighbor’s with a boo sign, a poem, and a package of goodies, and put it on the doorstep, ring the doorbell and skedaddle. Then we wait until we think it’s safe, and we high tail it back home. We boo two people every year, but only after we get booed.

There once was a man on our street,
Whose security system was neat,
We would try to sneak by
Avoiding the eye,
To leave a “Boo” sign and a treat.

How we did it:
We brainstormed on the topic of fall, with me (Mom) writing the ideas on a white board. Each participant chose a topic from our brainstorming list. Ray dictated to me on the topic of Booing, while I typed. Afterwards, we rearranged the sentences for better flow. We also picked out unimaginative words to replace with ones that are more precise. We used an online thesaurus to find stronger word choices. David dictated to me on the topic of our homeschool support group’s annual All Saints Party. With David, I had to ask many leading questions to help him imagine being there, walking through the room, describing what he saw. Afterwards, I wrote a limerick related to Ray’s topic of “booing.”

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