Hidden Poetry Project

One challenge in teaching very small children to write poetry is that they don't really know what it looks like -- its literal or even imaginary shape. Children hear stories of a certain length and "shape" regularly. There are reliable forms and predictable elements that a child can make their own. Once upon a time, there was a princess. Once upon a time there was a lonely shepherd. In the end, the monster was defeated and the princess married the prince. From that jumping off place, a child can bring in the talking potatoes or the underwater bicycle or whatever they bring to the form, because they mostly know what to expect, and what is expected of them.

Poetry is different, because its forms are so varied. There are traditional pieces that look very organized and rhyme and maybe fit on a page in a sonnety way. There are more freeform pieces with different line lengths and interesting breaks and punctuation. A child encouraged to write a poem may not immediately know the scope -- two lines, twenty lines, twenty pages? This project was a way that my kindergardener could visualize her poem and get a sense of the space she was going to fill, before she wrote it.

I found this cool painting technique on Scrumdilly-Do and decided to modify it into a poetry prompt for teaching the junior class in Phi Bensa Zoe Academy. Phillip is five, Sadie is four, and they both did really well with this.

If you click on this link for the painting idea, you'll see very excellent how-to pictures, much much better than mine. The basic idea is that you fold up a big piece of paper in a staggered accordion fold. You just put little ripples in it so that when it all lies flat there is a new surface for the paper , with lots of hidden little strips folded up into it. Then you paint on this new surface:



Then you let it dry for a while and stretch it out:



This is where the poetry comes in. After the kids had these neat staggered strips of color and these white strips in between, I had them dictate a poem to me, and I wrote each line in a white strip. Very cool. They could see how many lines they needed and about how long the lines would be, so I think it looked somehow doable for them. Anyway, they did it:



Here's Sadie with her finished project. It is a poem about ballet and karate and I think the theme of it is that she really likes to leap around the house yelling and making muscles at us but that doesn't mean she can't still call herself a ballerina.



The coolest thing about this is that you can fold the paper back up, hiding the poetry, and it becomes a painting again. It's a secret poem. Possibly a magic poem. The magical properties have not yet been tested yet. If I wake up and the sink is empty of dirty dishes, I will let you know. It certainly was cool to put it back together, and unfold it, and fold it up again, etc.

Many skills involved here: folding, paper-clipping, painting in one direction (you want to paint in strokes perpendicular to the folds so you don't get any into the white strips) Sadie enjoyed herself, and so did Phillip. So, good for kindergarten. But would this exercise have value beyond the paste-craving years? An older child, or even an adult, might find this an interesting way to integrate writing and art. The pre-defined line limit could be seen as a constraint or a challenge -- kind of like making yourself write a sestina or even a haiku. Give it a try and see what you come up with. And props to Scrumdilly-do again.

We're part of the Book Arts Bash. Are you?

The Destruction of Sennacherib by George Gordon, Lord Byron

The children have memorized their Assyrian poem. Now we're on to Ozymandias. They're such good sports:

The Destruction of Sennacherib

We're studying Mesopotamia right now, so for our poetry memory work, we're going to tackle this poem by Lord Byron:



The Destruction of Sennacherib
by George Gordon, Lord Byron

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass'd,
And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!
And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there roll'd not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpets unblown.
And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

Here's the down low on Sennacherib, Lord Byron, and the Assyrians.

The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear

I heard through the parentvine that they make the first graders at Norfolk Academy memorize this poem, so I let Benny have at it. Can't have the Academicians maintaining a monopoly on silly poems about lovesick animals. He's memorized a few others too, nonsense and otherwise, which I'll post as I get them on video. Next time I hope I manage the light better so that he doesn't look like The Phantom of Nonsense Poetry or something. He is extremely tickled by the idea of wrapping money up with money, so thus the giggling. :D



Ah, I just remembered I have a short video of him reciting the first five stanzas of "The Walrus and the Carpenter" at his little acting class at The Hurrah Players. Each of the kids had to memorize a short poem... Benny memorized quite a long one and only had time to recite the first bit.

The Walrus Test

Here's a run-down of our homeschool day, including a test for you, written by Benny, on a very important topic: Walruses.

The first thing we did was the walrus test.

The children have been avidly reading all about walruses. This was an area of inquiry that was prompted by Benny's memorization of "The Walrus and the Carpenter," by Lewis Carroll. We still haven't found a decent book about oysters.

Anyway, here is the walrus test, for your enjoyment, with Benny's spellings intact. I still can't grasp why he misspells things that are spelled correctly in a book right in front of him. I gather it'll be one of those things over which I have no control, which end up working out fine, like when he used to refuse to write lower case, and now he does it just fine. See how you do -- this test was delivered to us as Benny wrote it, and I have to tell you that he set his parents against each other in walrus-trivia cometition. I won. But I think Dan threw it.

1. Do Walruses Kill Humens?
2. Dose a Walrus (symbol for male) have pups?
3. Dose a Walres Have Wiskers?
4. Can Walruses Dive?
5. Can A Walus Hunt?
*at this point we had a conversation about yes-or-no questions and how it would be more challenging to have other kinds of questions too*
6. How Meny pups are there?
7. What are Walruses Like?
8. Waht are these:(picture of two bananas hanging from a hairy shelf)?
9. Do Walruses live in the North or Soth?
10. Is a (symbol for female) Walrus a cow or Bull?

After walrus class, we made muffins. Benny did almost all of it himself, but he did let Sadie help. Then Benny practiced his violin, and Sadie surprised us all by picking up his instrument (which is WAY too big for her) and managing to play Tuka-Tuka-Stop-Stop on the A string. Astonishing. And we all thought she was still under the weather today!

After lunch, we went to Ahno's house for a while. Benny did a poem show for Ahno and made it *almost* all the way through "The Walrus and the Carpenter" without any prompts. I'd say I gave him about 3 words, but really, that is the best yet.

When we got back home Benny practiced his multiplication using his "Garfield's Third Grade Math" software, and then finished his curriculum for the day by doing a few Rosetta Stone lessons.