I introduce my students to poetry beginning in the first week of school. We study a poem each week, noticing what poets do and the wide variety of approaches that make a poem a poem.

Our school schedule consistently fits the beginning of National Poetry Month (April) into our spring break. In order to not miss one minute of this month that celebrates the wonder, fluidity, and flexibility of words, I have learned to launch full-force into poetry the week before our spring break starts.

Yesterday we read Daniel Finds a Poem by Mischa Archer, a lovely and accessible book for young children where the title character asks all the creatures in his neighborhood to define poetry and then ends up with a poem compiling their answers at the end. With Daniel’s story as inspiration, we grabbed our sketchbooks and headed out to our school garden in search of poetry.

We are so lucky to have a wonderful school garden, and at this point in the year it is bursting with life and growth. It was a perfect place to enjoy the outdoors, some sunshine, and collect ideas for poetry for the zines students would write today.

Today to reinforce the idea of seeking and finding poetry in the world around us, I read This is a Poem that Heals Fish by Jean-Pierre Simeon and Olivier Tallec. My students were immediately engaged by the endpapers–fish in the shape of the alphabet with the P, O, E, and M in a different color! “It says poem,” C pointed out. They were all in at that point. This book was more abstract and metaphorical than the one we read yesterday–a perfect “push” as my students took their ideas from their sketchbooks and turned them into Poetry Is… zines (tiny paper books folded from a single sheet of paper).

These first graders did not disappoint! Here’s the tiniest taste:

Poppies are balls of agreement inviting bees over for fun. Corn is popping up to the sun, sunbathing, letting sun beam against their back! Potatoes are as brown as chocolate in Halloween. Carrot are as snappy as twigs. Cabbage is as bumpy as dinosaur skin. Poetry is yellow sun listening to leaves’ hearts beating. (By B)

Poetry is an onion plant waiting to grow. Poetry is a grasshopper jumping with excitement. Poetry is a tree enjoying the rain. Poetry is the worms playing in the soil. Poetry is a sunflower in the rain of a watering can. Poetry is a song that has metaphors and similes and sometimes rhyming words. Poetry is love urging you to write and compare. (By S)

All those amazing words and poetic ideas written in a compact tiny zine. It is truly a delight to watch these young poets blossom…just like the plants in our garden. National Poetry Month, here we come!