Hot Diggity Dog--A Poetry Picnic

On Tuesday Night, we invited all Kindergarten to 2nd graders to attend Brimhall's first Poetry Picnic. I originally saw the idea for a Poetry Picnic over at the Eliterate Librarian who had modified the ideas from A Year of Reading. I love great ideas that are shared!

We modified the Poetry Picnic to include some different stations, and we invited parents to join their children for a hot dog picnic as well as an evening of reading and writing poetry. We created an open house type format in which families moved from station to station, read the directions and then participated in the activity. Teachers had 2-3 stations set-up in their rooms and helped students and parents as needed.

Here is a list of the stations we had--again, many were ideas from the other Poetry Picnics:

• Read A Book or Two: Parents and children read poetry together.
• Ouch: Students read the poem "Sick" by Shel Silverstein, then wrote poems about things that hurt. (Thanks Nancy VandenBerge at First Grade W.O.W. for the great poetry idea!)
  

  
  

• One Inch Tall: Students watched this video of Shel Silverstein's poem "One Inch Tall"
   and then measured one inch with a ruler and drew themselves doing the activities in the poem as one inch tall.
• Tag Team: Families read the book Tag Team on the iPads, and then wrote a poem as inspired by the book.
• Roll a Word: Students use phonics dice to create word families.
• Poetry Splatter: Families used the Poetry Splatter Website to create poems on the Smart Board.
• Acrostic Poetry: Students use letter stampers to stamp their names down the side of a piece of paper. Families then brainstormed words that described their child
• Word Tiles: Students created magnetic poetry using word tiles.
• Poetry Placemats: Families read Meals and Snacks on the iPad. They then wrote rhyming words that they heard in the poems on a placemat.
• Fold Me a Poem: Families read "Fold Me a Poem" then created origami dogs together.
• Falling Down the Page: Families read poems from "Falling Down the Page" and then students created their own list poems.

If you would like any of the station directions or handouts, I would be happy to share...just leave a comment below.