After my last post I figured I made firework poetry sound pretty simple to create, so we decided to use our firework picture as inspiration and write a poem together. It was a sparkling success!
Materials Needed: red, white, and blue strips of colored paper (ours were 3 X 8-1/2), black, red, and blue markers, tape, and a large piece of drawing paper.
Directions:
1. Start by brainstorming some words about fireworks. We looked at our clothespin fireworks pictures and some video footage of fireworks exploding. I listed off a bunch of words for my little guy. I tried to demonstrate what each word meant as I said it.
2. Have your child pick his favorite words. I repeated most of the words we talked about over and over again and eventually my son's favorite words were very evident.
3. Write the favorite words on the colored strips of paper (I pre-cut these before we got started). I tried to add little pictures or symbols to demonstrate what the words meant. Older kids could write their own words, or trace them.
4. Put some tape on the back of the words.
5. Have your little one stick the words to the large piece of drawing paper. Let them decide where they go and don't interfere too much. 🙂
My little guy wanted them all in a row and I loved how he organized them colorwise...
6. "Read" the words together and "read" your poem too! My little guy memorized the words really quickly (mostly because of the pictures/symbols)... so now our poem is hanging in the kitchen where he can "read" it often.
7. The last thing I did was add some fireworks as a border. If we'd had star stickers, I would've had my little guy stick them everywhere... but he was more interested in reading the words than decorating the paper to look cutesy.
Creating poetry is one of my favorite language building activities because it can introduce new and interesting vocabulary... and poems are just fun to read too!
I love it!