Preschool poem #2: Sometimes I Forget

Writing poems and doing a fun activity have been great evening entertainment for us. For our second poetry lesson, we roped in Daddy.

The activity for lesson two was making boats from foil. I pulled up Google images of boats on my laptop to use as inspiration as we worked. The Shel Silverstein poem with this lesson is "Homemade Boat," and so we talked about what would happen if we forgot the bottom of the boat.

Then it was on to test the boats during a bath.


The questions in the lesson encouraged us to talk about various things we've forgotten (goggles for swimming, changing dirty panties, putting away socks), and what we would like to forget (cleaning my room). How do we feel when we forget stuff? Terrible. Cranky. Sad.

Then it was on to putting everything together.

SOMETIMES I FORGET

Terrible things
To change my panties
To bring my dolly and Leapfrog with
To put away my socks
Sad things

OTHER POSTS

- Click here to read about our first poem: http://drivingwiththewindowswideopen.blogspot.com/2013/12/preschool-poem-1.html

-  Click here to read about Poetry Tea Time: http://drivingwiththewindowswideopen.blogspot.com/2013/09/tea-time.html

Preschool poem #1

Poems written by a 4-year-old are just so cute and funny, aren't they?. DD's first poem was this:

Ugg, ugg, 
Tickle bug

Because she's been enjoying Tuesday Teatimes so much and memorized "Little Boy Blue" lickity-split, I decided to start using "A Poetry Unit for Preschoolers." Find at http://PreschoolPowolPackets.blogspot.com

For our first lesson, we read Shel Silverstein's poem "Magic" and then talked about how poems often make us feel or think something new. Then it was on to our own magic (courtesy of a little heavy cream and food dye.) She could have done this all day.

I asked what she would do if she could make magic. The day after she saw "Cinderella", my DD was focused on housework: cleaning up the house, doing the laundry and making dinner. But she didn't want to do those things. She wanted her dolly to! Plus, she wanted to paint photos for me (ah!) sell honey and do her homework.

When I asked her to describe her magic in four words, she had a bit of trouble. This is her first introduction to descriptive words (to adjectives), and so she needs a lot of examples to pull from.

Then, we put thing together.


My Magic: 

Beautiful
Fancy
Silly
Dresses for all
Red 
Blue

'Catch the heart off guard and blow it open'

The world lost a great poet today, and one who's words touched my life.

I was a 19-year-old student studying abroad in the United Kingdom. It was a cloudy, misty day in Ireland, and we stopped the bus by the sea. Professor Becknell read us a poem from Seamus Heaney that has echoed in my head all these years...

Postscript

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you’ll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

(from The Spirit Level)


Find videos of Seamus Heaney reading aloud 11 of his poems here:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/ailbhemalone/videos-of-seamus-heaney-reading-his-poems-aloud