Whether he is busy at FableVision inventing new ways to inspire children to just start, or enlightening people at his Reynolds Centre for Teaching, Learning and Creativity, or building a community center with his Blue Bunny bookstore, Peter Reynolds is doing what he does best, CREATING.
A couple of months back, my son came home with a request from his kindergarten teacher to capture the colours of the sky at various times of the day. She had read the story Sky Colour by Peter Reynolds and wanted to help her students experience a bit of the story. I thought this was a clever idea. Not having heard the story before, I quickly went out to my neighbourhood bookstore get my own copy. It was a unique pleasure to read his work and begin a poetry project of our own as a result of his inspiring words. Peter Reynolds is truly an ambassador for creativity.
We invited Peter to tell us more about where it all started and where he feels it is all going. Here is what we discovered.
Thinking back to when you were five years old, what did you want to be when you grew up? When did that change to story-teller?
I was asked by Major Mudd, a television show broadcast in Boston when I was a kid, what I wanted to be and I responded, “A firetruck.”
Fortunately, I broadened my horizons and started a newspaper with my twin brother, Paul in first grade.
That lit the publishing fuse for me.
I ate my dinner but I was mad.
I was constantly drawing. Every project had the most elaborate title pages! When my best friend and I passed notes, we weren’t writing about usual kid stuff, we were writing each other stories. Mine always had illustrations with them too.
m I wrote, along with a craft I created and will be using with my Kindergarten students this
a dress-shirt template, 3 tie templates (one with stripes that students can colour in a pattern, one with polka dots, and another for students to draw their own design). The shirt template is best photocopied on light construction paper, and the tie on white paper. Once the tie is cut out, have students glue the top of the tie onto the neckline of the shirt. When the tie is lifted, it will reveal the poem, My Hero, beneath.
(to create shoulders), and the rest of the shirt can be decorated in any way the students choose (polka-dots, stripes, finger-paint splotches, etc.).
Words On A Limb 