Month: February 2013

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

Did you know that March 2 is the birthday of Dr. Seuss? The full name of this famous writer and illustrator was Theodor Seuss Geisel. “Dr. Seuss” is a pseudonym, or “pen name,” that Theodor Geisel used for his books. You have probably read many of Geisel’s books, which usually feature rhyming poetry and whimsical drawings. Here are some of his most famous books:

Dr. Seuss

Theodor Geisel was born in Massachusetts in 1904. His grandparents were immigrants from Germany. When he was a young boy, Geisel’s mother would help him fall asleep at night by singing rhyming songs that she remembered from her own childhood. Geisel took an art class in high school. He also became the editor of his college humor magazine, where he wrote articles and drew cartoons. Later he found work as an illustrator for advertisements, drawing scary-looking cartoon insects to sell a pesticide called Flit. Giesel enrolled in the Army during World War II, where he produced war posters and animated training films. During this time, he also drew political cartoons that expressed his ideas about the war.

Fairy Tales and Poetry

Often when they’re asked to write a poem, children can get stuck at the first hurdle: What to write about. By using a familiar starting point, you can kick-start your class’s creativity by giving an easy way in—and a great place to begin is with the fairy tales they’ve grown up with!

Many fairy tales are even older than the printing press. Originally, they were passed on from person to person and generation to generation only orally. (Once books became commonplace, people such as the Brothers Grimm were able to collect the stories from people  and commit them to paper.) A great way for people to remember stories in those days was to turn them into rhyming poems or songs—often called ballads—so they could pass them on from one person to the next. This meant that each person could also change the story when they told it, to keep it interesting and relevant (or if they had forgotten a bit!).

Once the stories were written down, they weren’t as easy to change, because the printed word was there for everyone to see. This activity is all about creating a rhyming version of a well-known fairy tale story, and memorizing it at the same time.

Submit your limerick to win a prize!

Whether you are Irish, have a wee bit of Irish blood, like the color green or simply like to create limericks, Golly Gee-pers! Weekly wants to hear from you!

Create a limerick about civility, kindness or manners and the best one will win a set of award winning Table Manners Cards along with an official Golly Gee-pers award certificate.

Click here to read the official rules and find out how to enter the contest.

To view the prize go to: www.gollygee-pers.com.   The winning limerick will be posted on their blog,  Facebook page and twitter on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2013.

Onomatopoeia Poetry Lesson Plan

This lesson plan uses excerpts from famous poems to demonstrate how onomatopoeia can be used in a poem. Students will closely read the poem excerpts to identify the onomatopoeia words. They will then choose three onomatopoeia words from a suggested list to use in a poem of their own.

comic book sound effects

Onomatopoeia refers to words that sound exactly or almost exactly like the thing that they represent. Many words that we use for animal or machine noises are onomatopoeia words, such as “moo” for the sound a cow makes and “beep-beep” for the noise of a car horn. Words like “slurp,” “bang,” and “crash” are also onomatopoeia words. Even some ordinary words like “whisper” and “jingling” are considered onomatopoeia because when we speak them out loud, they make a sound that is similar to the noise that they describe.

Poetry often uses onomatopoeia words because they are so descriptive. This type of word helps us to imagine the story or scene that is happening in the poem.

Here are two examples that show how famous poets have used onomatopoeia in their poems. In these poem excerpts, the onomatopoeia words are underlined.

Pony Magazine 2013 Poetry Contest

Pony Magazine Poetry Contest for Kids

Live in the UK? Love horses and ponies? Creative? Want to get your writing published in a magazine? PONY magazine is offering the fantastic chance for you to become a published poet! Whether you have been writing for years or are a total beginner – they would love to read your horsey poetry!

To enter the competition all you need to do is get creative and write a poem about anything to do with horses. Have a favourite riding moment? A beautiful pony you love? Tell them about it!

Please Don’t Read This Poem: A Poetry Activity Using Invisible Ink

There’s nothing so exciting as a secret!  That’s why private messages written on folded paper, passed to friends who you know will keep your secret, are so thrilling… There’s a chance the note might get intercepted, and the information will get leaked!

This is a secret note

The following poem is about a poem that nobody is supposed to read. It’s a secret, but not a very good one, because everyone keeps reading it, even when the author asks them to stop!

Six Great Ideas for President’s Day Poems

George Washington

Presidents Day is celebrated on the 3rd Monday of the month every February in the USA. It marks the birthday of the first American President George Washington (which was actually on February 22nd, but we like to have our holidays on a Monday!)

In fact, that’s Great Idea Number One:

  • Write a poem called ‘I’d like to have a holiday on a Monday!’ Think about the annoying things about Mondays, and the awesome things about holidays. What do you normally do on a Monday? What could you do differently if it were a holiday?

Classroom Poetry Charades

Kids love to get up and get moving, which is great because  movement can help reinforce learning.  Most children also love games.  Put movement and games together, and you have a high energy activity that can be done quietly in any classroom: Charades!

Poetry Charades

The following game of charades uses the twenty-seven activities found in the poem “I Don’t Know What to Do Today.”  It’s simple to prepare, exciting, and teaches children that poetry is fun while helping them reinforce important skills like memorization, cooperation, and word association.

Exploring Ballads

When people hear the word ‘ballad’ today they often think of mushy love songs, but ballads have a much greater history. While most poetry is concerned with evoking emotions and feelings, the ballad is a vehicle for story-telling, and has been with us since medieval times.

The words are set to music to become a song, and follow a simple rhyming pattern and a set meter (or rhythm).

Each verse has four lines, and the poem can have as many verses as necessary to tell the story. Some famous examples are ‘Beowulf’, ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ and ‘The House of The Rising Sun.’*

Because a ballad can tell any story, they are a great way of fitting creative writing tasks into your curriculum.  Here are some exercises you can use to explore the form:

Evoking the Senses in a Poem

Evoking the Senses: How to Capture an Atmosphere in Your Poem

See Hear Speak

The best poems draw in their audience, and spark the imagination.  If you want to conjure up a complete world for the reader when writing about a particular place or time, you can call upon each of the five senses to create the correct atmosphere.

This short lesson will give you an example of how you can use this technique in your own poetry!