Color Poems

We created color poems.

Last April during National Poetry Month Powol Packets hosted a poetry competition and each day of the month partner bloggers wrote about various poetry topics. Anna, a former teacher at The Measured Mom had a great idea for writing color poems with children. Although her idea was targeted at pre-schoolers, it worked so well that inspired my 7, 10 and 12 year old kids.

Before introducing The Measured Mom's technique, we read the poem Yellow from April Bubbles Chocolate, an ABC of Poetry. It is one of my favorite books of poetry to read with the kids because they can relate to the short poems and like the illustrations.

Yellow by David McCord
Green is go,
and red is stop,
and yellow is peaches with cream on top.

Earth is brown,
and blue is sky;
yellow looks well on a butterfly.

Clouds are white,
black, pink, or mocha;
yellow's a dish of tapioca.

Since my kids are a little older and always want to do things their own way, we didn't follow the instructions exactly.

First we picked a color and brainstormed items associated with the color. Then we thought about interesting descriptive words as suggested by The Measured Mom. In addition to this, we discussed adding alliteration, rhyme and/or rhythm to the color poems to make them even more interesting.

In total between the four of us seven poems were written. Here are some of the results.

Colors by my 7 year old daughter
White as eggs,
Yellow shoes,
Red tomatoes,
Pink balloons.

Green grass,
Blue Skies,
Purple grapes,
Orange butterfly.

Pink by my 12 year old daughter
Pretty pink pigs, cherry blossoms,
Rose quartz, strawberry quark,
but not opossoms

Wiggely, squiggely worms
Flippant flamingoes
Corals bursting with life along sunny ocean coves

Luscious light lillies,
Bubbly bubble gum,
Pearl the hedge hog, butterflies, and a dogwood blossum

Yellow by my 10 year old son
Juicy pineapple,
Jerky yellow squash,
Yellow is also sun so hot

Yellow caution, danger to go,
Butter is so nice and oily - yo!
Yellow, yellow, is more pretty than not

Vanilla the hedge hog is yellowish too

Pineapple, yellow squash and more -
Do not slam the yellow door!



Here's a list of excellent blog hops to get even more educational activity ideas.