new posts in all blogs
Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: OIK Tuesday, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 5 of 5
How to use this Page
You are viewing the most recent posts tagged with the words: OIK Tuesday in the JacketFlap blog reader. What is a tag? Think of a tag as a keyword or category label. Tags can both help you find posts on JacketFlap.com as well as provide an easy way for you to "remember" and classify posts for later recall. Try adding a tag yourself by clicking "Add a tag" below a post's header. Scroll down through the list of Recent Posts in the left column and click on a post title that sounds interesting. You can view all posts from a specific blog by clicking the Blog name in the right column, or you can click a 'More Posts from this Blog' link in any individual post.
This week I'm sharing a poem that the Might Minnows discovered, hiding in plain sight, in the Leo Lionni book
Frederick. We read it in November, when the change of seasons was unmistakable here in the mid-Atlantic and it was important to think about storing up food--and sunrays, colors and words!--in preparation for the long winter. This book also served as our first introduction into what it is to be a poet.
I won't post the well-known "Five Little Pumpkins" rhyme that came before this one--it can be found enough places. But I will point out that our poetry anthology, when completed, deliberately included both simpler poems like "Five Little Pumpkins" and more complex ones like the one below that I titled "Frederick's Sky Mice." Sometimes we all learned the poem by heart, and sometimes it was enough to hear it over and over again and complete each line as the teacher read it. When we reviewed our anthologies at the end of the year, some children were surprised to find that they could read this one independently now!
Frederick’s Sky Mice
by Leo Lionni
Who scatters snowflakes? Who melts the ice?
Who spoils the weather? Who makes it nice?
Who grows the four-leaf clovers in June?
Who dims the daylight? Who lights the moon?
Four little field mice who live in the sky.
Four little field mice … like you and I.
One is the Springmouse who turns on the showers.
Then comes the Summermouse who paints in the flowers.
The Fallmouse is next with walnuts and wheat.
And Wintermouse is last … with little cold feet.
Aren’t we lucky the seasons are four?
Think of a year with one less … or one more!
Teachers, go
here and
here for great resources on Lionni's books, and enjoy the photos of mice visiting the Mighty Minnows!
I love kindergarteners. They are just so fresh and willing when it comes to language, ideas, possibilities! Last week, to supplement our biweekly Poetry Friday activities, we worked all week on a poetry study called "What Do Poets Do?" Each day brought a new poem and a new thing to notice. I guess I need to learn how to upload a document, but here's what the cover of the booklet looks like.
What Do Poets Do?
Dear Family,
This week we read poems to find out what poets do. We noticed that poets often choose to write about one small thing. We noticed that poets choose juicy words that sound good together. We noticed that poets choose how to arrange their words. Then we tried writing our own small poems by choosing and arranging juicy words. Please read all the poems with me, and when we’re done, let’s talk about which one gives us the strongest feeling.
Love, ____
The poems included are "April Rain Song" (Langston Hughes), "Hey, Bug" (Lilian Moore), "My Mouth" (Arnold Adoff) and "Night Comes..." (Bernice Schenk de Regniers). On Friday we listed some small things we could write poems about and some strong feelings we could make room for, and then off they went.
Here, without further ado, are the poems that resulted, in no particular order (a few of the twenty need a little editorial development--or just plain deciphering. I'll add them soon). I'm so pleased that they all felt equipped to be The Boss of Their Poem, and that their work, each according to his or her means, is as individual as they are!
Apple Pie
8 Comments on OIK Tuesday: what do kindergarten poets do?, last added: 4/28/2012
On March 1 I presented the new month's calendar to my kindergarteners. Although many in my school enjoy the undeniable convenience of a calendar stored on the computer and presented on the Promethean Board, I still make a grid on a big sheet of 1-inch graph paper and hang it at the front of the room. The physical work of each day's Calendar Marker is then always visible, birthdays and other special days can be referred to at any time, and the months become concrete artifacts that line the top of the walls and create a timeline of our kindergarten experience. Call me old-fashioned, but I think 5- and 6-year-olds need this concrete, omnipresent record of passing time in order for it to begin making sense.
So there was the blank calendar, with weekend numbers recorded and a small green shamrock in the number 17 box. "What do you notice?" I asked the class. Some of the responses were...
"What is that green leaf for?"
"I notice a clover for Leprechaun Day!"
"St. Patrick's Day is coming."
I acknowledged these varying levels of familiarity and began a short and challenging explanation of
St. Patrick's Day for a widely diverse group of children--after all, how do you fit the gigantic concepts of Christianity/Catholicism, sainthood, Ireland, history, immigration, cultural traditions and leprechaun magic into two sentences? After my first sentence about how many kinds of people have come to live in America, just like some families in our class, and have brought their celebrations with them, like Chinese New Year, I started to say,
"St. Patrick was--" and then got interrupted by a visitor at the door.
Bryon filled the pause that followed:
"--a rock star?!"****************************Have you heard of the rock star called Patrick
Who pulled off a Catholic hat trick?
The shamrock he takes;
The Irish he makes
Into Christians with wakes,
Then banishes snakes.
I'd like to see Bono do that trick!
Heidi Mordhorst 2012all rights reserved****************************
Okay, I worked way too long on that terrible piece of nonsense. I may have to come back and try again with a poem on the bigger idea of the rock stars of Kindergarten: those personalities who loom large in the K curriculum and the way their contributions do or don't make sense in the egocentric, here-and-now minds of 5-year-olds. Happy upcoming St. Patrick's Day, folks.
Back before Thanksgiving, when I asked the children to list what they were thankful for, I went for variety by specifying some categories: a person, a food, something in nature, something at school, something you like to play, a part of your body. Talia suprised me by writing
"my intinestinse" (which, unlike the average 5-year-old, she felt confident to spell independently).
Clearly intestines remain of great interest to her. Having read
Frederick all last week, we are looking forward to a visit from real pet mice and listing what we know and what we wonder about mice. On our KNOW chart, Talia's statement reads, "Mice have intestines." On our WONDER chart, her question reads, "Do mice have intestines?" She has a sense, very vague, of what intestines are for. But I think she could use some further information.
I'm working on a mouse intestines poem for Talia--do you have one too?
Part of the reading we do in Kindergarten is in “guided reading groups,” where I sit with a small group and a set of little beginner books such as Moms and Dads. I read it to them, they read it with me, they read it independently, and then they take it home to read with their families.
Moms and Dads was Group One’s greatest challenge yet:
“Mom is a bus driver.
Dad is a window cleaner.
Mom is a police officer.
Dad is a vet.
Mom is a librarian…”
On page 11 we learned that “Dad is a farmer,” and we had to look hard to see that he was a pig farmer, because only parts of various pigs were visible in the photo illustration. It was much easier to see that “Mom is a farmer, too,” because her cows were very apparent (and complete). However, for this group that includes four English learners, the tough part was remembering the vocabulary for all the jobs.
During the unison reading, I paused on page 11 to let the children refer to the photo and recall that “Dad is a… a…” Silence.
After studying the picture again, finally Marla said, “Pig!” We all laughed.
*****************************
Dads at Work (#29 in MyPoPerDayMo)
His dad is a window cleaner;
Her dad drives a rig.
Your dad is a dentist, and
My dad is a pig.
1 Comments on OINK Tuesday: Dad is a..., last added: 12/1/2011
What a treat! I sure love those seasonal/mouse names. Thanks for sharing. (And cute mouse in the pix, too.) *squeak*