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Hi all! We’re co-hosting the Poetry Celebration and Contest over at Preschool Powol Packets today! All month long, the co-hosts have been sharing great tips for introducing poetry to kids and we’re wrapping up the series today with a look at the work of Shel Silverstein. We decided to examine poetry with the Shel Silverstein book A Light in the Attic.
As we read the book, we noticed that some of the poems followed a certain rhythm pattern and some did not. For example, in the poem “How Many, How Much?” every other line rhymed. In the poem “Fancy Dive”, though, every line rhymed. We spent a little time writing two-line poems as a family using the section on poetry in Brain Quest Workbook: Grade 3.
We ended up with these:
“There once was a flea
Who wanted to ski” (Pooh)
“There once was a crow
Who played with Play-Doh” (Roo)
We also discovered that poems can change patterns. The Shel Silverstein poem “Tired” changes patterns from every other line rhyming to every line rhyming. Tigger used one of the poetry planning pages from the School Zone Second Grade Big Workbook to design a poem of her own that changed patterns. Here’s her poem called “My Family”.
“Friends don’t know about my family
And they don’t know about me.
My family is so cool!
It is probably better than being in a pool.
Love and hugs and kisses galore!
You know, they’re so kind. They even help me when I fall on the floor!” (Tigger)
We also learned about how poetry can make use of onomatopoeia. On page 58 of A Light in the Attic, we read the poem “Eight Balloons” and noticed the use of the sound effect “POP!” as a sound effect and a rhyming word. We talked about how onomatopoeia allows us to use sounds as words, and then we made our own poem using onomatopoeia.
We jotted down the sound effects first and then put them into a poem called “The Wind”.
“With a roar,
The wind went WHISH!
The kites went WHOOSH!
And the leaves went SHISH!”
The kids spent most of the rest of the day inventing their own rhymes, so I’m counting this as a successful creative writing lesson. 🙂
During the Poetry Celebration and Contest, you and your kids can submit original works for a chance to win some great prizes! If you’d like to enter to win some of the great prizes in the Poetry Celebration and Contest, you can enter via the Rafflecopter widget below!
The following companies are sponsoring the Poetry Celebration and Contest!
Be sure to stop by and visit all of the co-hosts of the Poetry Celebration and Contest!
Preschool Powol Packets ~ Homeschool Encouragement ~ Brave Writer’s Life in Brief ~ Word Traveling ~ The Measured Mom ~ Wildflower Ramblings ~ Line Upon Line Learning ~ Teach Beside Me ~ Living to Learn ~ Vicky Arnold Blog ~ School Time Snippets ~ Creekside Learning ~ Are We There Yet ~ Look at What You Are Seeing ~ Look! We’re Learning! ~ Our Homeschool Studio