Friday, April 3, 2020

Personification: A Day in the Life of .....

     Personification is a wonderful tool!  It means "giving non-human things human traits."  The students had a great time becoming objects for a day, and giving themselves their own unique voice and experiences.  I met so many great objects, from food, to school supplies, to sports equipment.  Enjoy these samples!

A Day in the Life of Elmer's Glue, by Avery, 2nd grade

     For one day, I am going to imagine that I am a bottle of Elmer’s glue. 

     Yawn! As I wake up in my craft drawer, I wonder if I will stick to something today. I’m ready to get out and play. I’ve been stuck in this drawer forever. 

     Then I hear footsteps coming near me and a little girl in fluffy pink pajamas comes and takes me out. She walks around her house and grabs a bottle of contact solution, pink food coloring, and a jar of rainbow glitter. She goes to her Slime Lab in the garage and gets to work. 

     She squeezes me into a bowl. Wheee, I feel so free! Then she pours my friend Contact Solution in and mixes us up. I really missed my friend, so I’m happy to be with her again. Then she adds a few drops of pink food coloring, and dumps a bunch of rainbow glitter in with us.

     All of a sudden, I’m a big, sticky glob of sparkly pink slime! I think I look pretty fancy.

     All day long, she plays with us. We’ve been stretched, rolled, poked, and even turned into different shapes. It sounds exhausting, but it’s really fun. At the end of the day, she puts me in a clear jar and puts us in her slime collection. I can’t wait to be played with again tomorrow.  




A Day in the Life of a Chapter Book, by Seoyoon (2nd grade)

     For one day, I am going to imagine that I am a chapter book.  My day would start on the library shelf.  I just love the library!  Other chapter books are getting checked out.  I wonder who will check me out.

     No one has checked me out, even though it is 2:30.  But, a little girl is coming by!  She looks through the chapter book section.  That's where I am right now.  Then, she spots me.  "Mom, I think I might like this book!" The little girl flipped through my pages.

     I am now at the check-out.  The girl is so excited to read me.  She holds me tightly, and walks home.

     At her house, she turns on the light and opens me.  She flips to the first page and reads, "One day, Emily was baking cookies.  Hey, she has the same name as me, Mom!"  I'm glad I learned her name.  

     When she returns me, it will start all over again.


 The Life Of An Orange, by James (4th grade)


I woke up early one morning and looked over at my other fruit friends including Apple, Banana, Avocado, Mango, Lemon, Lime, and the other oranges who were still sleeping,  all except for Banana.
  Banana farts a lot, so when he says, “Guess what time it is!?” I think, Oh no, Oh no,OH NO!!!!! 
“It’s fart time!!!” BBBBLLLLLLLLPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!! The fart is so loud and so stinky that everybody wakes up coughing and gagging, including me.


After we all got cleaned up in the bathtub with a shower, we started playing leapfrog. Banana was the hardest to jump over.  When it was my turn to jump, I had to jump over Avacado. Since he had just taken a bath, he was super wet because we had no more towels left!  So I went sliding off the side of a cliff! 


Smash!! I hit the ground really hard.  “Owww,” I moaned, but everybody on the counter was silent, and for some reason, paler.  I looked around to see what they were looking at. As I turned my head,I let out a gasp. Staring right back at me was a human! 


He looked down at me and said, ”What are you doing here on the floor?”  He picked me up and put me on the counter. ”Maybe I’ll eat one of your friends, because you’re bruised.”  He picked up one of the oranges named Arnold. Arnold was a nice guy, but he could sometimes be a bit annoying.  The human pulled out a little board and a sharp object. Everyone around me started gasping, squealing, and murmuring “It’s the torture device!” I didn’t know what that meant, so I watched.  He put the sharp object on Arnold, who was screeching at the top of his lungs, and suddenly it stopped as the guy pushed down on the sharp object…. killing Arnold instantly. 


After that horrific moment, they started picking us off one by one.  It was an endless hour of screaming and crying until Banana and I were the only ones left.  Of all the people I had to be stuck with, it had to be Banana. I was getting very scared, and I started shivering uncontrollably.  After what felt like days, Banana was finally picked to die. He let out horrible screeches that were so loud that I felt like my eardrums would burst.  He was picked up and his head was peeled into multiple pieces. I watched with horror as every part of him was peeled….I knew I was next.


After a few minutes, somebody came and I knew what was about to happen..The human took me out to the arena as I was screaming for help. They took out the pale arena and the killing device. I was set down on the arena, and they took out some strange new torture device.   This device had a handle at the top, and weird razor-like grating things covering its sides. They put this new horrible contraption down on the arena.


     They picked me up in their soft and warm hands, and put me on the side of the strange torture device, strongly pulling and pushing me up and down. was the most painful thing I had ever felt in my life! It started shredding my skin into tons of tiny pieces! It was extremely painful    

     After what felt like hours it was finally done.The torture had finally stopped, but then they pulled out the sharp torture device put it over me until… SLICE!!!


A Day in the Life of a Pencil Pouch
by Aarav (5th grade)

A Day in the Life of a Pencil Pouch
It is an exceptionally hot day in the city of Penciltown. The heat is quite unbearable for humans, but for me, Aarav the pencil pouch, it is as regular as breathing. My blue, shiny cover and sleek, elegant, silver zipper couldn’t care less. Especially since my contents (which included my best friend, Polly the pencil) and I are currently seated at the desk of our owner, Amelia, in a school where the AC blasts 24/7. This school, called Pencilton School for the Smart, is an industrial-type brick building housing over five hundred kids, and every single one of them are gifted. Amelia, an emote girl with black and blue hair with streaks of red, a peach complexion, and soft brown eyes, is an amazing mathematician, and the great owner of


...Drumroll please….
Me. 
Today, she’s using me quite a bit, for she is taking a hard test and keeps breaking her pencils or running them dull. Thus, she opens me up, the calming sensation of that zipppp as she unzips my stomach soothing me, and pulls out a new #2 Ticonderoga pencil. People walk by now and then but, due to our “island” desks, we remain in solitude for 80% of the time. 
Then a few boys walk over to our desk, and I feel myself falling off the table as one of them pushes me off. My contents spill out of me, and we all cry out in terror as we hit the ground. Thankfully, none of us are hurt. Amelia seems to sense that the boys had done it intentionally, so she ignores their fake apologies and hurries to pick us up. 
Once done, she returns to her work. We are relieved to be safe, and are now quite scared of those boys, who had purposely tried to hurt us. I knew humans were sometimes bad, but I didn’t think they'd be this bad! Luckily, nothing else bothers us throughout the rest of the duration of the test. Amelia finishes her test early, so she stands up from her desk, walks up to the teacher’s desk, a small wooden bureau, and sets her test into a rectangular metal basket. Her teacher, a small man with a bald scalp, round bifocals, a two-piece suit, and bright, green eyes, looks up from the papers strewn across his side of the desk and nods, then turns back to his work. 
Amelia walks back to her desk, which is much smaller than that of the teacher’s, and plops down into her chair. She then takes out The Lord of the Rings, removes her bookmark, and begins to read. I sit back and watch intently --as I have nothing better to do in my life-- as her eyes dart across the lines, quickly taking in each page, then turning to the next.
The bell rings, and I am flung back into the real world. Amelia gathers her things and heads out of the room, and I feel my friends inside of me being jostled around. The test was during the last class of the day, so now we are heading home.
My owner always takes a route through the woods on her way home. She loves being in nature, and after today’s tests and excitement, the woods will calm her down. Now, she quickly heaves her backpack from her locker and hauls it over her right shoulder. We are located in her right pocket, but the bag doesn’t touch us, for it is on her back, not near us in the front. 
She walks with ease, despite the heavy backpack filled with all sorts of things, towards the front door located at the end of the long line of blue lockers with home-brought locks. Her sneakers are barely making a sound on the polished marble floor of the hallway, though the soles of them, which have been partially ripped off, make a flapping noise as she walks. She exits the building into the carline area, a long strip of road where cars bustle by to pick up their kids. Pencilton School for the Smart educates students from first to eighth grade, and the carline is open for students first to fifth grade. Middle schoolers either walk home, or have their parents pick them up in a private parking lot. There are five such lots around the school, though I do not remember a time where my Amelia has ever used them. She always walks home, and enjoys the peace and quiet she gets as she does so. 
The “scenic route” she now takes leads us past the carline, left through Smart Street, then finally right to enter the looming woods ahead. The woods, named the “Dark Woods” due to the fact that the towering branches and canopies of leaves atop each tree block out any sunlight that might hope to shine through, was quite the daunting place, so dark that you could barely see, and yet an amazing destination in the eyes of Amelia. And the truth was that if one just looked a little past the scariness that was imposed upon the heart at first glance, one would find the beauty of the vegetation and cute animals that lived there. Yet, I suppose that only our fearless owner could really do that, as there was seldom another human soul that dared to venture through the shrubbery. As such, it was always silent, save for the chirping of the birds that had made their stick nests on the various boughs, or the sounds of the rustling leaves in the wind. 
Amelia enters the woods, then delves into the contents of her backpack to pull out a red flashlight. She turns its top to the right once to illuminate the space in front of her, then continues into the woods. From our viewpoint, we cannot see much. The only things within our peripheral vision are trees, trees, and more trees. 
The woods is a vast expanse, but luckily we don’t have to traverse the entire distance, because our house is located right outside a clearing coming up ahead. We could cut through a copse of oaks to reach our fence, where an opening provided us just enough room to squeeze through and get to the backyard.
Suddenly, Amelia trips on a hidden root and stumbles, then falls face first onto the muddy ground! I tumble out of her open pocket and hit the floor as well, hard. I can feel abrasions forming on my smooth pouch cover, and my zipper is broken off. My owner seems to sustain no injuries from the fall, though, so I can fight through the pain to feel relieved. Amelia stands up, dusts off her clothes and backpack, then picks us up in one, fluid motion. She frowns at my scars, then notices a nearby trash can. She dumps out my contents, even Polly the pencil, who cries out in pain, and stuffs them into her backpack. She then takes me, walks over to the trash can, and throws me in.
It is a long fall down, and I hit the bottom with a loud thud. I am located next to a wad of bubble gum and a rotten banana peel. Disgusting. My insides (though I suppose I don’t have any anymore) all twist up into a feeling of betrayal. I couldn’t believe that just because I was hurt a little bit, she threw me into the trash! Now I shall die alone here, surrounded by garbage. Oh, woe is me. I shall have my life ended soon. 
So this is the end, and I shall never see daylight again.

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