C's Poetry Picnic

The entire first grade presented a Poetry Picnic for family members today.  They sang songs and recited poetry; then we spent some time outside together.  It was great.  I'm so proud of C; he always does his best in school and he is a great student. 

Sun in our eyes!

I really love the book of poems he wrote over the school year.  Here is the dedication inside the book:

C wrote many poems, but this is my favorite.  The illustration is fantastic too!

The blue paper is just there to cover his name.

There is an "About the Poet" page at the end of the book.  I love what he wrote about himself:

Just to clarify, his favorite book is The Big Fat Cow That Goes Kapow by Andy Griffiths, and the second career choice he listed is "paleontologist".  He even drew a picture of himself as a paleontologist:

C has had a wonderful school year!  We are so proud of him.

Poetry

 This week we read a lot of poems!  Here are the titles of the poetry books that we read:

A Light in the Attic, poems and drawings by Shel Silverstein,
The Big Little Golden Book of Funny Poems, selected by Thea Feldman,
Fancy Nancy Poet Extraordinaire by Jane O'Connor and Robin Preiss Glasser,
Poetry Speaks to Children, Editor - Elise Paschen, and
A Pizza the Size of the Sun, poems by Jack Prelutsky

We did not read every single poem, but we read a lot of poems!  I would definitely recommend any one of these books, but our favorite is Poetry Speaks to Children.  I really like the CD with some poems read by the poets.  The illustrations are fabulous too.  The thing I love most about this book is that it is a great introduction to William Shakespeare, Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and more great poets.

The Fancy Nancy book does have some poems in it, but it also includes the story of Nancy struggling to write a poem for school.  C and R really liked the "poet-tree" in Nancy's class; this was a construction paper tree on the wall and each student wrote a poem on a leaf to hang on the poet-tree.  I think we may make our own "poet-tree" some day!

Do you have any favorite books of poetry for children?

I am linking this post to What My Child is Reading at Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns.

A Poem and Art

We read a lot of poetry this week.  I am trying to make an effort to read different genres of literature with C and R because most of what we read is fictional picture books and I think it is important to expose them to more than just picture books.  They are familiar with poetry and nonfiction, but we read a lot less of it.  This week, we read a poem from Poetry Speaks to Children.  This is a fabulous book of poetry that we happen to own; if you are only going to buy one book of poetry for your children, I recommend this one.  There are 95 poems from 73 poets including e.e. cummings, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, J.R.R. Tolkien, William Shakespeare, Langston Hughes and more.  There are also great illustrations for each poem and there is a CD with poems read by some of the poets.

The poem we read for our stArt (story + art = a great start) project is Crayons:  A Rainbow Poem by Jane Yolen.
This box contains the wash of blue sky,
spikes of green spring,
a circle of yellow sun,
triangle flames of orange and red.

It has the lime caterpillar
inching on a brown branch,
the shadow black in the center of a grove of trees.


It holds my pink
and your chocolate
and her burnt sienna
and his ivory skin.


In it are all the colors of the world.

I gave C and R paper and crayons and let them create art while they listened to me reading the poem.  I read it three times while they worked.  Here is their art:

 You have to love that face.

C drew everything he remembered from the poem and R used the colors that were mentioned in the poem.  

I am linking this to stArt at A Mommy's Adventures.