Playing with Pattern

Dear Poetry Friends,

For the foreseeable future, I will crosspost on Fridays, here and at Sharing Our Notebooks, where I have been sharing - and will continue to share - a daily notebooking talk. (Today is Day 10.) Instead of writing about my poem in a blog post as is usual on Fridays, I will include that day's video talk from Sharing Our Notebooks.

If you are new to visiting The Poem Farm, I welcome you to poke around. There are all kinds of things to try.

Fridays are for Poetry...here and for now, at Sharing Our Notebooks

Sending all the best from my home to yours.

xo, 

Amy

Another Week of Talks from Inside Betsy the Writing Camper

Photo by Amy LV

Students - Today's poems were inspired by poems by young people as well as by some writing I did this week. I won't be writing much here these days, but you can learn more about the poems above by watching this short video below.

Thank you so much to Irene for sharing our my new book with illustrator Ryan O'Rourke at her wonderful place, Live Your Poem. It was fun to think about "the delicious, the difficult, and the unexpected" related to WRITE! WRITE! WRITE!

Tabatha is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup over at The Opposite of Indifference with a neat exercise and a lovely poem which grew from it. We invite everybody to join in each Friday as we share poems, poem books, poetry ideas, and friendship. Check out my left sidebar to learn where to find this poetry goodness each week of the year.

Next Friday will be April 3, the third day of National Poetry Month! I will be sharing this year's project (still thinking), which I will crosspost each day here and at Sharing Our Notebooks next Wednesday, April 1. Happy almost National Poetry Month!

Please share a comment below if you wish.

If you are under 13 years old, please comment only with a parent 

or as part of a group with your teacher and class.

High Chair - Rituals, Routines, and Small Places

Sage Investigates

Photo by Amy LV

Click the arrow to hear me read this poem to you.

Students - Watching and thinking about animals is funny!  Our children use special voices when they imagine what our dogs and cats would say if they could speak English.  This poem comes from an old collection about a new baby, and I just found it and cracked right up.

Like us, animals have rituals and routines that they follow through their days.  A pig belonging to a friend of ours begins each morning at sunrise roaming beneath apple and pear trees.  Our dog Eli used to always spend each morning roaming under the high chair.  Can you think of any rituals that an animal you know follows?  What about you?  What do you do again and again, the same way each time?  This repeated action might be a neat idea for a poem.

Did you notice how the middle lines of today's poem goes back and forth?  I like to do that in a poem when there is movement between two beings or happenings.  You might have also noticed that the first two lines and the last two lines rhyme.  They're like bookends, tying this whole wee oaty circle poem together.

Today's verse is titled after a place, one piece of furniture that we have not had in our home for years.  Each place deserves its own poem.  Don't you think so?

Did you know that Cheerios are the most popular breakfast cereal in the United States?  The Cheerios company is 72 years old, and you can find the factory in Buffalo, NY, only about thirty minutes from where we live.  If you drive near the Cheerios factory, you can smell Cheerios.  Really!  (Buffalonians can even wear shirts displaying this fact.)  Once, several years ago, the factory donated many old Cheerios boxes to me for a bookmaking project.

Here is another baby and cereal poem from The Poem Farm archives, titled Baby Cereal. Can you tell that feeding babies was a theme of my life for several years?

Would you like to make a guitar or a dollhouse out of a Cheerios box?  Well, you can. These instructional videos by Joel Henriques are sponsored by Cheerios, but you could use almost any light cardboard box for the crafts.  Joel's blog, made by joel, is full of neat things to make.

Laura Purdie Salas is hosting this week's Poetry Friday extravaganza over at writing the world for kidshttp://www.laurasalas.com/blog/pf-buckled-bricks/.  Don't miss the new and old friends and poems!

Please share a comment below if you wish.

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