Tomorrow is the seventh-annual Poem in Your Pocket Day in New York City, where poetry events will rule the day. The promos say you should choose or write a poem and carry it with you all day, making sure to share it frequently. The event website encourages other activities for teachers and for students, including: [...]
When my middle child was in kindergarten, I stumbled upon an excellent and inexpensive resource for home study of reading and writing that we were able to put to work in the summer months. You may want to do the same. Starfall Education, a home-education supplier, sells Reading and Writing Journals and a set of Cut Up and [...]
Haiku, traditional Japanese verse, is a simple and popular poetry form that can be fun and easy for children to write. I have taught haiku to Girl Scout day-campers, a Girl Scout troop, and classrooms full of grade school children as a game or activity, rather than a writing exercise, with rewarding results. Most of [...]
The Official Shel Silverstein website is a fun place for some wordplay. The kids area: Let’s Have Some Fun, offers printables, downloads, and games and puzzles. I recommend them all, but point you to the Practice Being A Poet Game, an interactive game where your child can choose words from Silverstein’s poetry to create their [...]
No National Poetry Month is complete–or any fun, for that matter, without Shel Silverstein. In fact, if you or your kids think poetry is mushy, gushy, muck, you must read some Silverstein to cure you. Here is one of his classics from Where the Sidewalk Ends, reprinted with permission at Poets.org Sick by Shel Silverstein [...]
Betcha can’t write a story using only 50 words! Dr. Suess accepted this challenge from his editor, Bennet Cerf, and wrote Green Eggs and Ham with 50 words on the nose. We may not be seasoned authors like Suess, nor willing to ante up a $50 wager as Cerf did, but we can all try [...]
As we inch closer to Easter Sunday, I have always done what any book-freak does–dispatch the Easter Bunny to the bookstore. Both of my kids’ Grandmas give them sugary sweet treats for Easter. The last thing they need to find in their baskets Easter morning is a ton of candy that will be wasted, or worse, eaten. My kids are not deprived–there [...]
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. So begins T.S Eliot’s poem, The Wasteland. Perhaps April was chosen as National Poetry Month in tribute to this very poem? I wouldn’t recommend reading [...]