Poetry Basket for Creative Writing Fun

We love poetry. We own a few kid’s poetry books and frequent the poetry section at the library.

We’ve experimented with writing our own poems and illustrating poetry.

Recently, I wanted to delve a bit deeper and see how we could be inspired by one poem. I was inspired by Montessori poetry baskets, but wanted to add in more elements to inspire my Kindergartner to do a little creative writing.

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I started with the poem Who Has Seen the Wind? by Christina Rossetti. It’s a simple poem with beautiful imagery. I also knew the girls would easily identify with the poem. After all, we’ve experience many a windy day.

I printed out the poem and laminated it for durability.

I also printed out a few pieces of clip art of trees and leaves. I included felt leaves, small sticks, pine cones, and acorns.

I added some drawing paper, writing paper, and colored pencils to round out the basket.

You can do this with any poem. Just add items mentioned in or inspired by your poem of choice.

We read the poem aloud a few times.

We talked about the wind. We talked about ways in which we would see the wind.

Then we pulled out the drawing paper.

Drawing Prompts:

*If the wind were a person, what would it look like?

*Draw a tree with its leaves blowing in the wind.

*What are some other ways that we can “see” wind? Draw them.

After drawing for awhile, it was time to start writing.

I provided some writing paper that had a square at the top for a picture and 5 short lines for writing.

My daughter is just starting to get comfortable writing and I didn’t want to overwhelm her with too much space for writing.

Writing Prompts:

*Write an acrostic poem using the word WIND.

*Write a pretend conversation between you and your imagined wind person. What would you ask him/her? How would he/she answer?

*How many words can you come up with that rhyme with wind?

*Write a poem about your favorite part of nature. Will you write about the sun, the moon, trees, flowers?

We chose to write the acrostic poem. My daughter enjoyed this style of poetry when we first learned about it and she wanted to try it again.

The above poem is all hers… spelling mistakes and all. I think I’ll keep it forever!

We definitely got our creative juices flowing, because by the time we were done writing our poems, the girls wanted to make kites. We found some construction paper, markers, and yarn and made a couple of simple kites.

The girls loved the poetry basket so much that they’ve requested more poems. What poem should we choose next?