National Poetry Month Challenge - Day 9
mud
filthy, stinky
splatters, oozes, mires
grit, slop, leaf, stalk
greens, grows, tickles
lush fragrant
grass
--Katherine Quimby Johnson. All rights reserved.
Today's offering is a diamante--Seven lines in which lines one and seven are opposites. In between come two adjectives, three verbs, and four nouns (two each describing the nouns in lines one and seven). I'm mulling over a diamante poem that moves from diamonds to--here's the catch--whatever is the softest substance found in nature.
I had the pleasure of reading poetry to second graders this morning, as part of my local Rotary Club's literacy outreach. I read Reeve Lindbergh's The Midnight Farm, (illustrated by Susan Jeffers) which I love as much because I know the farm (I babysat for her when I was in high school), as for the poetry. Before we started, I asked the kids to look for patterns and it was amazing what they came up with--from the rhyme, to the counting concept, to alternating between indoors and outdoors, to starting each spread with the same "Here is the..."
Then I read some of Today at the Bluebird Cafe: A Branchful of Birds by Deborah Ruddell, illustrated by Joan Rankin. This is a really fun read-aloud, with a mixture of poems that range from silly (a vulture with good table manners) to inspiring (an eagle soaring), and one that led to some interesting conversations.