Happy National Poetry Month! This month I am tagging along with poet/author Amy Ludwig VanDerwater during what has become her annual NPM Project. You can click here to learn more about this straight from Amy! This year she is writing and sharing a new poem every day, each highlighting a different poetic technique, but keeping the same subject. Her challenge, 1 Subject 30 Ways, is also a bit of an informal book study and master class, as she’s using her fall 2017 release Poems Are Teachers (Heinemann) as her guide. Join us!
Today’s poetic technique chosen by Amy is to use striking words. My subject is, and will be all month-long, vernal pools. After 22 days of writing a poem-a-day, my well is, admittedly, beginning to run dry. I turned to my Kindergarten naturalists/poets for inspiration this afternoon. Today was our first day back after spring break and the wood frog eggs from our vernal pool that we are head-starting arrived, so our classroom was buzzing with excitement.
The mentor text I chose for today’s challenge is this week’s Poem of the Week in our classroom, Mary Lee Hahn’s Earth, You Are.
This wonderful Earth Day-themed poem can be found in The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations: Holiday Poems for the Whole Year compiled by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong (Pomelo Books, 2015). As a class, we brainstormed the “beautifuls” and “funnies” of our vernal pool — the soothing sound of birds, salamander smiles, many shades of green, eggs like Jell-o…
Using our list, I selected one from each category (so many gems to choose from!) — beautiful, shiny water and funny frog games of Hide and Seek and Peek a Boo — to be used. Thesaurus.com helped us generate some more striking words — sparkling for shiny, comical for funny.
It will be fun to create more “beautiful” and “funny” pairs using their ideas. Stay tuned!
I hope you’ve been following along the journey of the 2018 KidLitosphere Progressive Poem, a fun annual collaborative project lovingly begun in 2012 by poet/author Irene Latham. This poem has magically, and quite literally this year, been growing right before our eyes daily during the month of April. This year we are following along the journey of Jasmine, a seed, and her companions Moon and Owl. Jasmine, from a long line of poet’s jasmine, began has begun making her way in the world, and has at long last found her poetic voice! The process has been fascinating to follow and I was excited to dive in for the first time with line eighteen. I hope you will follow Jasmine’s journey for the remainder of our Progressive Poem month by clicking on the blogs in the list below. I can’t wait to see what happens next!
April
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This post is part of my personal National Poetry Month celebration. I hope you’ll join me in sharing your favorite poetic gems throughout the month of April whether they are written by you, your students, or another poet.
Wondering and Wandering 
How fun! I’m honored to provide your mentor text! I love your vernal pool version!
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Thank you, Mary Lee. We are loving our study of your poem. It’s so perfect. Our families are joining us in our Poem Of The Week study this month for NPM, so I can’t wait to see how they respond to it, too!
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“Plunking” is a wonderful word, full of sound. I really enjoyed seeing the class notes and the student model, also very important.
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