Poetry Friday is with Irene and Live your Poem
On Wednesday I presented to my students Amy Ludwig VanDerwater’s “Writing the Rainbow” poetry project. We were on the letter C for our poem-a-day writing, so we wrote crayon cinquains. The cinquain syllable pattern is 2,4,6,8,2.
Amy suggested this video of Mr. Rogers’ visit to a crayon factory. The kids loved it, especially when the crayons appear in the tray like magic.
I will share a few of our poems here, but you can go to our Kidblog to see more.
Erin’s orchid bouquet
Erin chose the crayon “orchid” and drew the picture above. I encouraged my students to use metaphor in their poems. Erin imagined that the orchid bouquet was a crown for a woodland princess.
Orchid
Blooming Flower
Wonderful Pristine Crown
Perfect For A Woodland Princess
Wondrous
by Erin, 5th grade
When Madison colored in her journal with the crayon “Cadet Blue”, she saw a sky before the rain. I love how the name of the crayon informed her metaphor.
Rainy
Cadet Blue Sky
Thunder Beating on Drums
Lightning Marching Through the Clouds
Pouring…
by Madison, 3rd grade
I randomly picked a crayon from the box of 24 crayons and got “blue bell.” Of course, at first I thought about Blue Bell Ice Cream. Then I did a Google image search and found bluebell flowers. I drew a picture in my journal using the blue crayon. When Lynzee saw my picture, she said “It’s a fairy skirt.” So I stole that and used it in my poem. This form is fun to work with because it makes you think harder to get the syllables right.
Bluebell
a fairy skirt
balancing on a branch
hang like church bells in the steeple
Ring! Ring!
by Margaret Simon
Go to Amy’s padlet to see more of this crayon color poetry craze.
Reflections on the Teche 