We Love Poetry!

April is Poetry month!

We LOVE POETRY IN KINDERGARTEN!! And now we can even WRITE  our own POETRY!!!

We actually celebrate poetry all year long in my classroom by doing one poem a week and then keeping every poem that we learn to read,  in a poetry folder. But April gives us a chance to take a closer look at poems, study them and write our own! Throughout the month I read several poems written by Shel Silverstein, Jack Prelutsky, Mary Ann Hoberman, and Alan Katz to give the kiddos a variety poems by different well-known poets for children.

 

Since I have already taught my kiddos about lists and how to write them, I start the month out with a list poem titled, “Bugs” by Margaret Wise Brown. If you don’t have the poem, click here and get a copy of it. Throughout the week we talk about how Margaret used adjectives or in kindergarten language “describing words” or “words that tell us about something” in her poem. Words like: round, shiny, green, buggy, fat…etc. Then I write each line of the poem out on a large index card and have the children illustrate each; remembering to use details in their illustrations. There are 20 lines if you include the title and the author. I have 23 students in my class so I had the other three students draw me a bunch of bugs for to cut out and use to decorate our poetry display. I then displayed the finished project in the hallway. 

 

 Once we have completed the project, we continued to talk about the poem and how Margaret wrote the poem. Starting and ending her poem with a sentence that sums up what the poem is about. Then we write a list poem together as a class. This year our class poem was titled Fruit. My students came up with different kinds of fruit and then we talked about how to describe those fruits. And this is what we came up with.

Then we read the book Beetle Bop by Denise Fleming, written much like a list poem and using several describing words to tells us about the Beetles in her book. The kiddos LOVE this book because IT IS A RHYMING BOOK... AND... it also gave them "DESCRIBING" words to use in their own poems! They just couldn't believe how my different kinds of beetles there were!

 I had each student think of something that they REALLY liked, then I gave each of them the list paper that they have used previously to write lists in the writing center, and then let the kiddo's write away! These are some of the poems they came up with! 

This poem, "Bikes", was written by one of my students who is reluctant to write in her daily journal...THE POWER OF POETRY!!!! AMAZING! She was able to locate her describing words on the word wall this is a HUGE step for her! 

Next it is time for my students to become official POETS...I PUBLISHED their poems (by typing them up) and then the students will illustrate them! (They will be doing today!)

This is one of the neatest and most unique poems I have had a student write out of all of the years I have done this activity. 

This week we are learning about Haiku poems by reading the book "DOGKU" written by Andrew Clements and will be writing a class haiku. 

Next week we will be working on tongue twisters and riddles. The riddles lead us right into our zoo unit where the kiddos will write their own riddles about a zoo animal. I give each student a brown paper sack with a Beanie Baby in it. Their job is to peek inside the bag and write a riddle about that animal. Then I pair up the kiddos and they read their riddles to each other. Their partner has to guess what animal their partner wrote their riddle about! This is one of my favorite activities of the whole year! And the kiddos love it too!  

HAPPY POETRY MONTH!