Poetry Friday -- a new love?

Today, for the first time since I ever started homeschooling with a CM-feel, we did a "poetry Friday" day. Many of my fellow home-educators do these weekly -- we finally did yesterday. I found some fabulous books to help us:

• Corbett, Pie – Start Writing Poetry: Stuff and Nonsense – Ideas and tips for creating all kinds of poems. Smart Apple Media (North Mankato, MN) 2006. This is a wonderful book that helps kids play with poetry and practice writing their own. The author has included shape poems, descriptive poems, alliteration poems, rhyming pairs poems, chants and action rhymes, magic poems, riddle-writing poems, nonsense poems, counting rhyme poems, making up words poems, and performance poems. Corbett gives an original poem (or more) to illustrate the poem type and then suggestions for how to write your own. We had fun with this one!
• Driscoll, Michael (illustrated by Meredith Hamilton) – A Child’s Introduction to Poetry: Listen while you learn about the magic words that have moved mountains, won battles and made us laugh and cry. Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers (New York) 2003. I love these kind of books – not only does it help kids learn about all the different kinds of poems (with a “Professor Driscoll” who helps explain things along the way) but it includes a cd of poems read by actors that’s really fun to play either with the book or even in the van!
• Kennedy, Caroline – A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Children. Hyperion Books for Children (New York) 2005. This a wonderful poetry collection for reading to the kids. There are some fantastic classics in here and ones I’d never seen. She has also included some from scripture which makes it a really nice collection.
• Prelutsky, Jack – Read a Rhyme Write a Rhyme. Alfred A. Knopf (New York) 2005. Prelutsky chose many fun poems for children, sorting them by theme or style. Then, and this is the really fun part, he included some “poemstarts” so children (and adults) can have fun writing their own poems.

The kids had some much fun going through these silly, clever, classic poems that they wanted to write their own.

Lego Maniac (9) wrote two riddles:

A Riddle for You:
I am as round as the sun or the moon
But you think I have five corners.
But you are wrong, I shine at night.
And help to keep the black sky bright. What am I?

Another Riddle for You:
JRR Tolkein made me
I corrupt and devour souls
I was melted in Mount Doom
I’m as round as your rolls. What am I?

(see answers below if you're stumped!)

String Bean (8) tried a riddle and then a surprise-ending descriptive poem:

What am I?

I look like a rainbow on the ground.
I can be up in a tree or down on the ground.
I can not walk, but a breeze makes me fly.
I drink water, but won’t spit in your eye!

My Dolls

Yesterday, I played with my dolls
And had the bestest time.
I played with the one with a pretty curl
I played with the one that I named Myrtle.
I played with the one with the pretty dress.
I played with the one that’s always a mess
I played with the one with lots of brown hair
I played with the one that fell down the stairs.
I played with the one that got stung by a bee
I played with the one that talked back to me!
I had to spank that one!

Pretty good eh?

We had so much fun with this. We're going to do poetry every Friday for the month of May and see how the kiddoes progress. Bam-Bam thought it was too hard, but when he heard the warm reception the others' poems got from older sister, Kotch, and dad, well now he wants to write some too!

One of the books I mention above, A Child’s Introduction to Poetry: Listen while you learn about the magic words that have moved mountains, won battles and made us laugh and cry, will be wonderful for building a whole poetry unit and delve deeper into this new found "love".

BTW, the answers to the riddles (in order above):

1. a star
2. the Ring
3. flowers