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 |  work in progress- writing assignments & links for use in the home school |
Because I use creative writing as a filler for primary grades when the older kids take longer on an assignment (I have a folder of story starter cards that make it simple for a young child to get a story idea), I decided not to do another short story with my first grader this week. Instead, I got her started with some simple poetry exercises that my older kids did in previous years. I finally have time to write it up for your use (ask me someday about campus visits, medieval recorder madrigals, broken ankles and oral surgery...)! While young kids love rhyming, it is usually a hard thing for the beginning poet to handle both rhyme & meaningful content at the same time. Poetry doesn't have to rhyme, you know. My older daughter suggested starting Elizabeth with something simpler. Great idea! Here's the sequence we are working on: 1) alliteration Alliteration is the repetition of the same starting sound: like "wild windy weather". Poets use alliteration to add a musical quality to lines. Not all the words have to start with the same sound, but the repetition of even a couple sounds adds something special. Elizabeth went wild with this one, and actually ended up with a rhymed poem. Don't feel your child has to do that, too- free verse poetry (unrhymed) can be very effective in expressing emotion or images. This is one time that your child doesn't have to use complete sentences! Try to get them to drop unecessary words (articles, to-be verbs, conjunctions, etc.), leaving just the most important sentence parts (nouns, adjectives, action verbs, etc.) to speak. Start by having your child make some lists of words that start with the same letter sound. Then have them pick a topic or tell you something using some of them in a single sentence. If it is a long sentnece, have them split it between two lines of the poem. Keep adding lines, but make sure it makes sense. Here's Elizabeth's very first poem: Lizzy Eats by Elizabeth Kennedy Lunatic Lizzy likes to eat lollipops and lilacs, with cheese and chalk and chips and checkers and lots and lots of rocks. 2) Haiku Small children enjoy clapping out syllables. Take that skill and turn it into a poem! Haiku is a Japanese poetry form that has very simple rules that work well with young children. I like it for beginners because there are no requirements for rhyme, punctuation or capitalization. For adults, haiku can be a very elegant poetry form, with the challenge being saying something significant in so few words. Try your hand at it, along with your child! Haiku is traditionally about a nature topic, describing in a few words a single descriptive image. Each haiku has only three lines: line 1: 5 syllables line 2: 7 syllables line 3: 5 syllables Pick a recent experience your child had outdoors. Ask him/her to tell you about it. Stress sensory images. Clap out the syllables. Too long? See if they can make it shorter. Too short? Have them add something. Keep at it until they get a line with either 5 or 7 syllables (this will typically be the easier 7 syllables, which would become the middle line of the haiku). Write it down so it isn't forgotten- either they dictate to you or write it themselves. Now have them tell you more, aiming for the right length for the other two lines. Often a short line can fit either before or after the 7-syllable line; just make sure the three lines make sense together in the order you choose. It helps if you ask them leading questions about their experience (What did it smell like? What did it feel like, etc.) Elizabeth found making five or seven syllable lines easy; it was getting three that went together that was hard for her. Here's her first attempt: Haiku by Elizabeth Kennedy It was fall morning raking thousands of leaves I ran through the smoke More poetry ideas for young kids to come.....   ** Image ID #933346 Unavailable **  |
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