Land and Sea Poetry

Painted Turtle and Chipmunk lead a Poetry Circle for the Turtles!

The verdict is still out!  The groundhogs are a little confused.  Some saw their shadows yesterday and some did not!  What is your prediction? An early spring or 6 weeks left of winter?  Most of the turtles predict an early spring but I don’t know. Looking at all the snow and feeling these cold temperatures, when will spring come?  For now let's enjoy whatever time is left of winter.

Thanks to Chipmunk and Painted Turtle who came to visit us from the St. Marys Poetry Circle, our two poetry experts who talked to us about what it takes to be a poet! They gave us some ideas and tools for writing a poem. The Turtles are entering poems to help celebrate St. Marys Poetry Month. What is a tool for making a poem? Think about your favourite land or sea living thing and create a poem.  Ask your family to help you find words to describe it.  Where does it live? What colour and shape is it?  What do you love about it?  Will your poem have rhyming words, a rhythmic flow or be an acrostic poem? Look up some examples in books or on the computer to help you. Bring your poems next week if you are excited and proud to share them! Chipmunk and Painted Turtle are also excited to see your poems and they will put them on display for the community to read.  

After brainstorming the names of land and sea living things and some interesting characteristics about them, some of us got to work right away, putting their own creative spin on poem writing.  One of the most important parts of writing a poem is imagination! Snapping Turtle used a little humour and imagination in his poem, describing a fly and a spider excited to take a bite out of some pie! We might need your help and creativity to help some of our ‘little poets’ next week!

Snapping Turtle being a poet!

Perhaps writing poems for the ones you love is more your style?  In the library, Grey Squirrel read us Groundhog versus Cupid, a rhyming story.  What was this book about? What happened at the end of the story? Grey Squirrel also kept us busy by looking for all the groundhogs hiding in the library. What was the hardest one to find? Did you have some help from a friend?

Off to Mystery Forest to visit some of the animals who live on the land and the water around us at Harrington.  Did you see the swan swimming by itself?  Why is it alone?  We could not find the  pinecone bird feeders we left along the trail.  What do you think might have happened?  Thankfully we had more seeds to give out.  What bird did you notice in the tree? Did you hear it call out? Hint…one of our Turtles has this bird as his nature name!

In the story Fox Found A Box we were reminded about how much more we can hear and see when we quiet our bodies and our minds.  Crows, the blowing wind through the trees, branches bending…what else did you notice?  Stay tuned and aware when we meet again.   You never know what might be around you when you really use your senses!