Sail with Brainstorming Bella and her Fabulous Friends as they steer our sieve to the land of alliteration. Bella, a bold Buttons & Figs fan, begged and beguiled her classmates at the West End Montessori school in Richmond, Virginia into hosting this episode of alliterative fun. You’ll get to hear them define alliteration, play with alliteration and challenge you to write your own alliteration too. If you’d like to send in your own perfect poem, call 623-282-4080 and leave your little lighthearted lines. No go play.

On this episode we’re sailing our sieve to the land of Nonsense with Calef Brown’s latest book, “Up Versus Down: Poems, Painting and Serious Nonsense.” Calef’s nonsense verse shook up our minds, inspiring us to gather wacky words and play. Buttons & Figs kids show you how we played with word associations in order to write nonsense verse of our own – we hope you’ll give it a try at home. Calef has great advice if you’d like to write too, be sure to listen to his whole interview. Read all Calef Brown’s books aloud (13 to be exact!) for a super, earlicious treat (not to mention reading 13 books would be a nifty little feat.) www.buttonsandfigs.com

Enjoy our full, fun interview with Calef Brown, author of “Up Verses Down: Poems, Paintings and Serious Nonsense”. Learn about Calef’s process for writing nonsense verse, advice for becoming a writer and hear him read some of his poems from his latest work. Be sure to listen to episode “#43 – Nonsense Play with Calef Brown” to hear the ways we played with nonsense. www.buttonsandfigs.com

Here is the Buttons & Figs kids nonsense verse in process. We played word association games to gather our list of words, then we arranged them to build nonsense verse. Listen to their pieces on Episode #43 – Nonsense Play with Calef Brown.

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How am I supposed to remember our wordplay this week?! Perhaps this Mnemonic Tonic will help….{gulp}! Listen and learn a mnemonic to help you remember the order of the planets…it’s one I learned in 5th grade from Mr. Barnett! Then, make up your own.