Art & Poetry: PreK/K & Lower Elementary

 Hi everyone,

We missed those in our class who couldn't make it today! Hope everyone feels better soon!

Our focus on creative writing today started with reading the book Rocket Writes a Story, by Tad Hills. This hopefully helped answer the question, "what can you do if you don't know WHAT to write about?" whether it's a poem or a story. Try asking your child what their answer is!

Jacob Laurence used beautiful colors in his series on Genesis that we have been studying. In that same vein, we read a book called Red Is a Dragon: A Book of Colors, by Roseanne Thong, illustrated by Grace Lin (one of my favorite illustrators and authors!) which helped us think about all the amazing words we can choose which will remind us of each color in the rainbow. Each child then chose a specific color to focus on and created a collage in the style of Jacob Laurence. I wish we had more time to add details to the artworks! But I really liked everyone's ideas, which we also wrote down in the form of a color poem together. Here is our collaborative poem:

Blue is a bluebird flying in the sky

Blue is a wave in the ocean

Yellow is the sun

Yellow is the corn

Pink is a butterfly

Green is Lewis

Green is a terrible smell, like a skunk

Green is the grass

After class was done, I embellished our poem and added a little bit more to make it rhyme. Here is my interpretation! The last four lines were inspired by the middle schoolers, who came into my classroom to give suggestions. I was grateful for their help and laughter!

Blue is the bluebird flying in the sky

Blue is a wave in the ocean

Yellow is the corn growing so high

Yellow is the bright shining sun

Pink is a butterfly fluttering past

Pink is a beautiful bouquet of flowers

Green is the springtime, growing grass

Pink is the sunset after showers

Green is a terrible smell, like a skunk

Green is (so he said today) Lewis

Sometimes it can be hard to rhyme

Uh...

How do you do this?

This is an example of getting ideas from what we see around us, working on transforming the ideas and adding to them, and then finding a way to make them rhyme and flow better. It was a process! That's what the character of Rocket in our book taught us today, because he worked on his story for a long time and kept adding to it, erasing parts of it, changing it, and making it say just what he wanted. 

I hope that all the students will be inspired to read and write poetry in the future! Thank you for a wonderful semester.

Best,

-Alyssa