Preschool and Poetry

I participate in a coop preschool with other moms and our little four and five year old munchkins.  Preschool is both wonderful and awful . The hour before preschool is the worst hour of my life. I get crazy stressed out trying to get ready for preschool with cleaning my house, prepping snacks, and getting activities ready.  I actually really enjoy teaching the little ones.  They are so eager to participate and completely adorable.  We get to pick our own topics, so today I decided to teach poetry writing-to little children who can't hardly sit still, much less read or write on their own.  It turned out awesome!

 I decided to go with learning about senses, how describing words are a big part of telling stories in poems, so we started by learning about the five senses: taste, touch, see, hear, and smell.  Then, we read some Shel Silverstein poems and identified some of the uses of senses in the poems. After reading a few poems, the kids drew a picture of one of the poems we read where animals were eating ice cream.

Ice Cream Stop 

The circus train made an ice cream stop

At the fifty-two flavor ice cream stand.

The animals all got off the train

And walked right up to the ice cream man.

“I’ll take Vanilla,” yelled the gorilla.

“I’ll take Chocolate,” shouted the ocelot.

“I’ll take Strawberry,” chirped the canary.

“Rocky Road,” croaked the toad

“Lemon and Lime,” growled the lion.

Said the ice cream man, “Til I see a dime,

You’ll get no ice cream of mine.”

Then the animals snarled and screeched and growled

And whinnied and whimpered and hooted and howled

And gobbled up the whole ice cream stand,

All fifty-two flavors

(fifty-three with the ice cream man).

Then we used our senses to describe a lemon.

The children first passed around the lemon and took turns touching it.  They said the words they were thinking.  Then we looked the lemon with our eyes, followed by slicing it open and smelling it. The funniest thing was watching them listen to the sliced open lemon like it was a sea shell.  Most of them didn't hear anything by my daughter heard the juices.  Then we tasted it.  Here's our group poem:

The Lemon

tastes good
"I liked it"
"I didn't"

feels bumpy and flat
smells a little sour

Yellow!

Then they went outside and played and we wrote another poem about the cat.

The Cat

He has black spots
on white
climbing in the tree.

Why is he running?

He loves running,
needing exercise or 
he gets fat.

More water please.

After poetry they wanted their faces painted like cats, a dog for Daniel, a unicorn for Mariah, and Chewbaka for Max. Like I said, they are adorable.