Subway Acrostic Poetry

As part of our exploration of New York City, we learned a little bit about the subway.

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We used the books, A Subway for New York by David Weitzman and Down in the Subway by Melanie Hope Greenberg, as inspiration.

A Subway for New York told the history of the subway system. It was a little advanced for the girls and I knew they wouldn’t have the patience for it, so I paraphrased and we looked at the pictures.

Down in the Subway was a fun story about the different types of people you can meet while riding the subway. After reading, we used our inspiration for a fun writing project.

An acrostic poem is one in which the first letter in each line spells out a word or phrase. It’s a fun type poetry for kids that are just beginning to write.

Our poem was going to be about the subway, so I wrote the word lengthwise down our paper.

Lizzie (age 5) helped me think of words that began with each letter. We started with “S” and came up with stations, stairs, subway, signs, etc. We looked through the books for inspiration.

Once we had a few words, she chose the one she liked best, stairs. We went on down the line. Some letters were easier than others.

When we couldn’t come up with a single word that worked, we used a phrase instead. Now that she’s over halfway through Kindergarten, the concept of an acrostic poem was easy for Lizzie to grasp and she enjoyed helping me think of words.

Once we were done, we had a poem we were quite proud of.

We had so much fun with this project that I know we’re going to write many more acrostic poems in the future!

Have you ever written an acrostic poem with your children? Tell me about your experience.