Hey Diddle Diddle! Three Little Riddles!

Littleness

Photo by Amy LV

Students - Greetings from riddle land!  Last week I had the good fortune to spend two days as a poet-in-residence at Klem North Elementary School in Webster, NY.  During these days, I wrote with and learned from many young poets.  I did a little bit of scribbling in my own notebook too, and those notebook scribbles grew into today's small riddle poems.

I like riddle poems.  It's fun to figure them out.  Here's a great riddle poem book, by Rebecca Kai Dotlich.

Available through IndieBound

I also like short free verse poems that say a lot with few words.  Someone who does this very well is Kristine O'Connell George.  Here is one of my favorite poem books full of small free verse poems.

Available through IndieBound

Well, I did not realize it until I began writing (this happens often), but my poems today surely grew from my admiration of the books you see above.  Remember - read poetry to write poetry.  You will learn so much from other writers.  I always do.

This week I am delighted to visit Michelle Heidenrich Barnes at her beautiful blog, Today's Little Ditty. Along with a generous interview, Michelle shares interiors of EVERY DAY BIRDS, a giveaway, and a writing invitation that I was allowed to choose!

Over at Sharing Our Notebooks, please enjoy a post by writer, college student, and traveler Jenna Kersten. I will draw for our current book giveaway in that space on Sunday, and a new post will go up next week.

Next week, please come back to The Poem Farm to read poems by Tracy Minton's fifth graders from Douglas J. Regan Intermediate School in Starpoint, NY.

And today...the Poetry Friday roundup, open for all and always, is hosted by Linda at TeacherDance.

Oh...if you are still wondering about any of the riddles, here are the answers!  (Just hold your computer upside down or stand on your head to read.)

Please share a comment below if you wish.

Riddle Poems and Radio Lab

Messy Draft

by Amy LV

 

Students- Can you guess the topic of the above poem?  There are a few hints, and I'd be interested in hearing if you can figure it out...and if so, at which line you said to yourself, "I've got it!"

Riddle poems are games.  The writer has the answer, and the reader must try to find this answer through the written clues.  If you choose to write a riddle poem, one of the challenges is to include just-right clues - not too easy, not too hard.

To write a riddle poem, first think of something, anything!  Now write a few one-line descriptions of it.  Piece these together, rhyme if you wish, fiddle away with words and sounds, and then you will have a riddle poem.

Once your riddle poem is complete (be OK with crossouts), test it out on someone else to see if they can figure it out.  That's what I did with today's poem, and my husband Mark did figure out the answer.  He also helped me realize that all throughout this verse, "they" would be a better word choice than "it."  Thank you, Mark!

Below you can read my poem for Round 3 of Ed DeCaria's March Madness poetry tournament at Think Kid, Think! My assignment in Round 3 was to include the word BOILING. After much pacing and worrying and scribbling, this verse spilled out.

If you are wondering where the idea of rescuing a lobster from a grocery story came from, it came from one of my favorite npr radio programs, Radio Lab.  In this short (about 14 minutes) clip, you can hear the story of The Luckiest Lobster, the very lobster who inspired my funny little poem.

As of yesterday, there are eight of us left in the March Madness at Think Kid, Think!, and we just received our words last night.  Away we go...voting begins tomorrow (Tuesday) morning!

If you write a riddle poem, or if your class writes some riddle poems...please do let me know.  I would be thrilled to feature them next month - National Poetry Month!

Did you ever wonder how and why popcorn pops?  You can find out at Wonderopolis!  (I make popcorn in a pot on the stove, so we really do hear those pings!)

Please share a comment below if you wish!

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My Birthday - Poems about Occasions

Calendar

Photo by Amy LV

Happy birthday to all leap year babies!

Students - Today's poem is a holiday poem, a math poem, and a riddle poem! The other day, when I sat down to write, I got thinking about what a special year this is...leap year! I stopped to think about those with birthdays on February 29 and how they can only celebrate their true birth date every four years.

Writing a math riddle poem is a neat little exercise.  Just come up with a math problem in your head (or on paper) and then play around with it and with words, turning it into a verse.

Having a leap year birthday puts a person in a special sort of club, much like being a lefty. And so of course, there is a group you can belong to. It's called The Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies. You can read about why founder Peter Brouwer founded this group here at the LOS ANGELES TIMES.

Did you know that there is a special newspaper that only comes out on leap days?  It's in France, and it's called La Bougie du Sapeur!

To read about some children who have leap year birthdays, check out THE WASHINGTON POST.  To read a bout a leap year couple, check out npr.  Too, npr has some suggestions about how to spend this extra 24 hours...

And now for a few words from Marilla, NY native, Scott Gowanlock, about having a leap year birthday.

I love having a leap year birthday because I can trick people when they ask my actual birthday. They don't actually believe I am actually five years old, so when I show them my license, they are amazed. Also, 75% of the time I can have a 2-day birthday because I was born in February so we celebrate it on the 28th, but I was also born the day after the 28th which is March 1. This gives me a 2-day birthday! We usually celebrate it on whichever weekend falls closest to the day, either before or after.

When I was born, I was supposed to be on the news as I was the first Buffalo leap year baby born in 1992. However, on that same day, a woman had her second leap year baby so they interviewed her instead.

Thank you, Scott.   Happy birthday!

Did you figure out the answer to this poem's question?

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Riddle Me! Riddle Me!

For the month of April, I continue to revisit blog posts from throughout last year's poem-a-day.  For each April day, I will include a poem idea or strategy followed by examples and sometimes a challenge to try!

Riddle Poems

Students - Riddles are fun for everyone.  There are hints, and there is a mysterious answer.  In between, though, our brain must make a leap of understanding.  Hmmm...what could this be?

Here are two riddle poems that I wrote this year.  Can you figure either one of them out?  I don't think they are very easy.  Do you?

from October 2010

(Answer - Quotation Marks)

from March 2011

(Answer - March)

Rebecca Kai Dotlich's poem book, WHEN RIDDLES COME RUMBLING, is full of riddle poems to figure out.  Tucked into the illustrations you can find letters which spell the answer to each riddle.

Available through Amazon

If you wish to write a riddle poem, first think of what it will be about.  Then write...but don't give away the answer in your title.

Teachers - one fun publication idea for riddle poems is to make a class book with one riddle per page.  The answers might be written upside down, behind lifting flaps, or on the page following each poem.  Alternatively, students might make display posters of their poems with answers behind flaps.

If you were not here for last Friday's Classroom Poetry Peek, please stop on by to see the fourth graders of Tioughnioga Riverside Academy and their classroom publishing station.

This Month's Poetry Revisits and Lessons So Far

April 1 -   Poems about Poems

April 2 -   Imagery

April 3 -   Poems about Animals We Know

April 4 -   Line Breaks and White Space

April 5 -   Poems from Everyday Life

April 6 -   Free Verse

April 7 -   Poems from Wonders & Questions

April 8 -   Classroom Poetry Peek & Circular Poems 

April 9 -   Poems about Science

April 10 - Rhyming Couplets  

April 11 - Today - Riddle Poems 

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Who Am I? Poem #335 is a Riddle Poem!

Students - this is a riddle poem.  Last Wednesday had the opportunity to visit Calvin Coolidge Elementary School in Binghamton, NY for three poetry assemblies, and we talked about riddle poems.  In fact, we made some up.  To write a riddle poem of your own, think of some hints about an object or an animal.  List these hints in a mysterious way, giving juuuust enough information to help your reader but not too much information.  Then, ask someone to read your poem with an eye toward solving the riddle.

Did you solve my riddle?  This poem is about March.  As they say, "March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb."

The idea for this poem really came from two places: riddle-land, and the world of writing from expressions.  Give one of these a whirl this week if you're feeling uncertain of what to write about.

Teachers - this month is my last month of a poem each day for one year.  For April, National Poetry Month, I plan to feature poetry in classrooms.  I would love to feature special projects and poetry ideas as well as student work.  Please leave me a comment or send an e-mail to amy at amylv dot com if you are interested in this possibility.

Thank you to Amy Zimmer Merrill for arranging and organizing the wonderful visit to Calvin Coolidge Elementary.  It was such a delight to receive a beautiful flower pot of poems from young writers, eat cookies together, see the welcome sign, and most of all meet with so many warm and open students.  I am grateful to have had a chance to visit and hope to read some more student poems as they make their way to Amy's glittery mailbox!

Dorothy

(named after Dorothy Aldis)

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Inky Flyers - MyPoWriYe #196

Students - did you figure out what this poem is about?  I will play music for one moment to see if you've got it.  Da Da Dum!  Da Da Dum!  Tra La Laaaaaaaaaa!  If you guessed "quotation marks", then you are correct!

One of the most exciting moments in writing a poem is discovering the initial comparison, concept, or magical thought.  I love the idea of quotation marks flying around speakers' words in books.  It's so cute, so adorable, so personified!  Once those little punctuation sparrows flew into my head, there was no shooing them out.  

EXCEPT.

Except what?  Well, the first draft of this poem contained one of my favorite rhymes:  words and birds.  And while this is not a serious problem, I went back into the archives to see how many poems I have written using this exact rhyme.  There were six poems rhyming words and birds, or word and bird, not including this one.

Somehow, this drove me crazy.  What was wrong with me that I keep using these same two over and over again?  Back to the writing board, searching for another rhyming word for word or words, I visited RhymeZone and was tickled to find the first entry was blurred.  Hooray!  Not only would this break an old pattern, it would also create an image of flying marks without using the word bird at all.

Below, you can see one of my favorite baby-book-gifts.  BLESS US ALL, by Cynthia Rylant, spins a cozy prayer about families and animals for each month of the year.   Two of these poems contain the rhyming words stories and glories.  I remember noticing this years ago and marveling at how my favorite writers have favorite words, and sometimes we can spot them!  And one of my most favorite poets of all, the 1985 recipient of the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children, Lilian Moore, likes words and birds too.  She rhymes them in her lovely poem, "Poets Notice Everything".

Students - try reading several books by one author and keeping an ear/eye out to see if your author has a favorite word that keeps showing up.  Check your own writing too.  Do you have favorites?  If you do, be sure to read carefully asking, "Is this truly the right word for this spot, or am I simply leaning on an old favorite?"  If it's the right word, keep it.  But if you are just coming back to something easy, a word that drips out without effort, be willing to let it go as you seek the perfect word for your moment or thought.

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Today's poem is also a riddle poem.  It can be tempting to title our works with the most obvious idea that comes to mind.  In fact, I almost titled this poem, "Quotation Marks".  Then I began wondering, "What if I don't tell what this poem is about?  Will the reader know?  Won't it be more fun to allow the reader to discover the meaning?"  I do hope that you were able to figure it out.

"Inky Flyers" continues The Poem Farm's series of punctuation poems.  Somehow it is more interesting to write about those little dots and blips than I ever imagined!

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