Poetry Break #4: A Mother Goose Poem
of Lesser Reknown
Introduction: Show the children a chewed up shoe and ask them whatever could've happened to it! Then read the poem to confirm what someone will probably guess.
I'm Just a Little Puppy
I'm just a little puppy and as good as can be,
And why they call me naughty I'm sure I cannot see,
I've only carried off one shoe and torn the baby's hat,
And chased the ducks and spilled the milk--
there's nothing bad in that!
From My First Treasury Mother Goose, Publications International, Ltd. (2002)
Extension: Aren't puppies wonderful? But ask the children what it would be like to have a grown up dog that tears up things like puppies. Ask them what could be done about it.
Poetry Break #5: A Poem About the Library
Introduction: I can still savor the smell of the first library where I worked for nine years. We even had an aisle full of leather books that I regularly visited just to lean into them and breathe in the aroma that represented wonderful stories..
Library
By Valerie Worth
No need even
To take out
A book; only
Go inside
And savor
The heady
Dry breath of
Ink and paper.
Or stand and
Listen to the
Silent twitter
Of a billion
Tiny busy
Black words.
From Valerie Worth's All the Small Poems and Fourteen More, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (1994)
Extension: Bring a leather bound book for the children to smell, as well as a new book for them to smell the pages of. Talk about the wonderful places to visit and the interesting people they could meet-- all in the pages of books.
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