Introduction: Ask the children to picture in their minds the following poem. Imagine the noises accompanying the words of the poem.
City Street
City street
Jumping feet
Traffic cop
Bus stop
Skateboards roll
Hockey goal
City flowers
City showers
Sidewalk scrawls
Basketballs
Brownstone stoop
Pigeon coop
Twilight
City nite.
From City Street, Greenwillow Books (1990)
Extension: Using a long piece of butcher paper (long enough for each child to have a place on which to draw), have the children draw what they pictured on a city street. Display on the wall or in the hall, along with the poem.
Lee Bennett Hopkins
Introduction: Ask the children where birds go during the winter months? Tell them you have another question for them to ponder, and then read the following poem.
How?
How to
do crawl,
spiders, creep,
ants, flit,
ladybugs, flutter,
bees-- fly--
butterflies, as
fireflies, winter
dragonflies, comes
fleas-- bitterly
chilling
know the
sky?
From Flit, Flutter, Fly! Poems About Bugs and Other Crawly Creatures, Doubleday (1992)
Extension: Use poem as a springboard to a science lesson in discovering the answer to that question. Display a number of books about insects and have the children work in groups to research the answer.
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