Writing Onomatopoeia Poetry

Our first poetry tea time was a great success.

Sharing poetry with children introduces new ways of playing with words and greatly increases vocabulary. We have read lots of poetry, but not been as successful creating poetry. To breath new energy into our writing program, we held a Poetry Tea Time. This time we followed a lesson from Brave Writer. The kids loved eating snacks while doing school work, and I loved seeing them write poetry with enthusiasm.

The Arrow is a lesson product line from Brave Writer. Each issue is centered around one particular book and contains selected copy work/dictation passages with suggestions on how to teach them. Behind the copy work/dictation lessons, are poetry lesson and writing project lesson ideas.

For us, our prior attempts at copy work were less than successful. I personally greatly needed guidance on how to go about a copy work session as well. These lesson plans were exactly what I needed.

The back of the Pippi Longstocking Issue of the Arrow contained a lesson plan for writing poetry with onomatopoeia. Each child had a turn sharing writing they did, a poem, or short story. Next we read a few example poems in the lesson as well as my kids favorite board book - We're Going on a Bear Hunt - Then we worked on our own poems.

First we decided on a noisy place in which to set our poems. Then we spent some time writing down the sounds we hear in that place. After that we began writing poems. These are only rough drafts, and we stopped here since the kids were excited about their work. I wanted to keep the positive vibs going.


Airport - draft by my 7 year old daughter
At the airport it's so noisy
all the airplanes taking off
And all the people making noises
Walking all about
Pulling all their luggage with a clanging and a crackit
Bump, bump, bump as the suitcases go by
Rum, rum, rum as the airplanes take off and land
They always have to take off and land
otherwise they would land and crash


Near Jace is a Loud Place - rough draft by my 10 year old son
It is a noisy place to be by Jace
Na, Na, Na, Ga, Yow, Yow
These are the noises to hear from me
Ya, ya, yah, g, bee
The sounds from me are endless here
Boom, clatter, clash, smash, smash, smash, wham, boom, ping
I am a very noisy thing
If you try to beat me in a contest you will learn
I am the best here - What I'll do
is yow, yang, ying, ping, pang, poo, wahoo
Here is a question easy to answer;
Will you try to beat me or will you give up?

Autobahn - rough draft by my 12 year old daughter (who was recently stranded on the autobahn with friends when their car broke down)

The trucks go vroom
and the cars go zoom
while the broken ones clink and crash

as they race to shut the door
to the onwards coming crash

The pickup truck races through the sun
to tow the broken car away
then there's not much danger
of a crash on this road for about a year and a day
whoosh, vroom, roar, whier
smash, clash, roar, boom, bang




This post is linked to:
Living and Learning at Home

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