National Poetry Month: Poetry Pictures

I love that National Poetry Month comes in April. This year I've been determined to explore poetry more with my kids during this month of celebration. I got out a stack of poetry books last week (above). This is by no means all my poetry books, but some of the books are just not kid-appropriate, and some I couldn't find. I try to keep all my poetry books on one shelf, but that doesn't always work…

I was inspired by this post at Making Books Blog to make that type of poetry collage, but kids do have minds of their own. We started with a basic theme of "spring" and started plowing through poetry books. We all read aloud whatever poems appealed to us, and then we picked a poem each to make into a picture.

Laurel chose this Shel Silverstein poem, "The Oak and the Rose."

I chose "Violets" by Valerie Worth. It was Laurel's idea to add real violets.

Duncan chose "The Man in the Onion Bed" by John Ciardi. He added a special scratch-and-sniff feature with wild onions from the yard.

If you'd like to try some creative writing with your kids and don't know where to start, take a look at my WordSmithery. I recommend starting from the beginning, but here is a fun activity for spring flowers poetry.