Yummy! Eating through a Day Poems Selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins and Illustrated by Renee Flowers

Yummy! Eating through a Day Poems Selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins and Illustrated by Renee Flowers

Yummy! is a great introduction to poetry to very young readers. The poems are simple, accessible, and silly, focusing on favorite foods and meals.

Target ages: Preschool, kindergarten, 1^st grade

Springboards for lessons: This book naturally lends itself to explore rhyming patterns. Students can create a matching game that requires to pair matching rythming together.

Additionally, students can be encouraged to choose their own favorite food and create descriptive poems and illustrations about it. Older students can write these poems themselves and younger students can dictate their ideas to their teachers. These can also draw attention to cultural differences within meals and how food is celebrated differently around the world.

A Poke In the I; A Collection of Concrete Poems Written by Paul B. Janeczko and Illustrated by Chris Raschka

A Poke In the I; A Collection of Concrete Poems Written by Paul B. Janeczko and Illustrated by Chris Raschka

A Poke in the I gives students an opportunity to explore poetry and how we can use language not only to convey a literary meaning but also as tool to create a visual landscape as well. The subjects of the poetry contained within this book are relevant to the interests of younger readers and allows students to think in a creative, nonlinear way about many different subjects.

Target Ages: 1^st and 2^nd grade

Springboards for lessons: students can create their own poetry, similar to the “Ice Cream Shaped Poem”. Students would be encourage to think about descriptive words that encapsulate ice cream and “arrange” their poems to fit the silhouette  of the “ice cream”.