Creative writing: Winter

For some time, I've been giving all three teens a weekly writing assignment to be written not as some polished piece, but as an exercise just to get them writing. This week's writing assignment was about winter, which still holds us in its grip:

In your writing composition book, write what winter means to you. It can be prose, poetry, or even phrases or strings of words. Write about the sights, smells, feel, sounds, temperature, emotions, sports, events, holidays… anything to do with winter. Write in PEN. 1½ pages minimum.

Larissa’s composition:

Winter, snow, cold, ice… Clean crisp air. Silence.

Animal tracks through the woods. Shaggy deer, fuzzy rabbits, fluffy squirrels.

Sledding, skiing. Flying down hills in sleds, snow in your face as you scream. Then saliently skiing along wooded trails, listening to the swish and glide of the skis.

When the sun rises in the morning or is high in the sky at noon, the crystal ice diamonds glisten and shine in the snow. And when the sun sets, the snow glows yellow.

Bears, woodchucks, and skunk hibernate and flocks of birds fly south. Only some, like the tiny, tough chickadees stay behind cheering each other and twittering that spring isn’t far behind the first autumn frost. And really, it seems that soon you hear that familiar honking of geese passing by, and you know that soon the flowers will be blooming again.