We began by visiting the library and taking out a load of poetry anthologies. Alhamdulillah our local library had a good selection so no need to buy any to get what I wanted! One book which stood out though was compiled by Julia Donaldson. The girls recognised her name straightaway as she's been a popular author in this house for a while! And it contained a good mix of both modern and classic poetry. We were also recently gifted this beautiful, nature-themed hardback anthology, which not only feels like a luxury to look through, but also contains the perfect mixture of modern and simple enough poems the toddler can understand to more complex and classic poetry to stretch the twins. I also went through the workbooks I have and found some good comprehension sheets based on poems for the girls to do 1-2 each week.
The girls are already very familiar with the concept of rhyming so I didn't want to dwell on that aspect too much. I did make sure to point out any cases where the poem didn't rhyme though to highlight the fact not all poetry has to be rhyming! So for the first week we just did lots of reading - together and individually - and discussion: about what they thought of the poem, likes and dislikes, the rhythm and structure, what the poem meant or its purpose, etc. We came up with the definition together: poetry is just playing with words.
The second week, we focused on rhythm and repeating lines/patterns in poetry, highlighting examples from the books and also doing this particular comprehension:
Afterwards, we used it as a basis for their own poem about shoes. We discussed it together first, both thinking about shoes (what do shoes do? What different ways can you move in your shoes? They took it in turns, one moving around on the floor and the other writing a verb to describe it on the whiteboard, eg spinning, jumping, kicking, etc to create a long list) and about the structure of the poem (which part repeats? What effect does it have? Which lines need to rhyme? How long should our poem be?) then I sat with them individually to help them write their own (Where is your poem set? Which shoes would be suitable? What are you doing there? How are the shoes moving? Look at the list on the whiteboard to help!). I also prompted them with a variety of rhyming words to choose from when they wanted it (let's go through the alphabet to see what rhymes, or almost rhymes. Which word makes most sense?) and this is what they came up with:
When they were done, I showed them how to search for pictures on Google and they chose a couple to illustrate their work.
The next week I wanted to concentrate on expanding their vocabulary, so introduced the idea of synonyms and using a thesaurus. First, I reminded them that poems don't always need to rhyme, then found an example of a riddle to use as a scaffold. Next, I modelled with them how to write the beginning to a poem about animals, which gives a clue to what the animal is on each line. We tipped out some toy animals onto the floor to help give them a visual and they chose to use a camel as the example. So I asked them to look at the toy and describe what a camel is like (think about what it looks like, what it does, where it lives...), did the same for an ostrich, and together we came up with the two verses:
I have two bumpy humps,
I'm brown and yellow,
I live in the sandy desert,
I like to spit out runny spit,
I'm a camel!
I like to put my head in the ground,
I become scared when an animal comes,
I'm big with a long neck,
I live in Africa,
I'm an ostrich!
I recapped editing with them, to check for mistakes and improve their work, and read through the verses asking them what they thought their reader was imagining after each line. Would it be more fun if we tried to trick the reader so they get a surprise? I used the second verse as the example by rearranging it:
I live in Africa, (could it be a lion? or an elephant?)
I'm big with a long neck, (no, it must be a giraffe!)
I become scared when an animal comes, (...I guess it could be a giraffe?)
I like to put my head in the ground, (wait, giraffes don't put their heads in the ground!)
I'm an ostrich! (ohhh! let me read the verse again - yes, that makes sense!)
The girls found this hilarious. 😂 So I asked them if they wanted to rearrange the camel verse too and they did. 😁
I typed up these two verses into Word, then helped the twins individually to come up with two more verses of their own for animals of their choice.
When they were done and it was time to edit, I explained the concept of a thesaurus to them. Sometimes, you might feel like the word you have is boring and you want to change it, but you can't think of a better one yourself... When that happens, you can look in a thesaurus - it lists words which are synonyms, i.e. words with similar meanings. I showed them how to use the built-in thesaurus in Word, then they went through their poems and used the thesaurus to make their poem more interesting.
Finally, I printed their work out so they could illustrate it.
When Papa came home that evening, they read their poems to him and asked him to guess what the animal was after each line. They were both pleased their tricks worked and he didn't guess correctly straightaway. 😂👍
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