For most people, Friday is a fun day because it is the start of the weekend. Feeling free of school or work for the two days ahead can make Friday the happiest day of the week. Finishing a week that also included a federal holiday can lift the happiness level to a fever pitch.
To keep the fun in our Friday, today, we will focus on being creative. Writing backwards is a technique you can use to make rhyming words work together. When we write in school, the words in our sentences go onto the page in the same order as we would speak them. When we start to write backwards, we are not sure what our finished sentence will say. Not knowing for sure where we are going helps us be creative.
Now, did you notice something about my opening sentences today? I used a lot of words that began with the same letter. I will confirm the letter later.
Poetic word of the day: alliteration (click here to read the definition on Merriam-Webster.com)
“Alliteration” happens when you begin two or more words in a phrase or sentence with the same consonant sound or blend. Tongue-twisters are very good examples of alliteration: “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers” and “She sells sea shells…” are two you might know. They are poems, too.
PROMPT: 1. Pick a pair of words that rhyme and write one of them on the right side of your paper. Write the other word below the first word a line or two down the page. Nouns are what I recommend for this exercise. These words will end your poetic phrases or sentences.
I will create my example lines below. As I write this, I do not know what my poem will be about. For my rhyming words, I chose:
robe and globe
2. Next, put an adjective before the each word: I chose
cozy robe
spinning globe
3. Add words, one-by-one, to the beginning of your word pairs to build poetic phrases or sentences. Try using alliteration with two words that are side-by-side.
comfy, cozy robe (…see where I used alliteration?)
dizzy, spinning globe
My finished pair of rhyming lines are:
Lounging in my comfy, cozy robe,
I think about the dizzy, spinning globe.
The two lines make sense together and I can continue to write more lines, backwards or forward to complete my poem.
4. Finish your poem by adding more lines that make sense with the first two. Add as many lines as you like.
FOR PARENTS WITH YOUNGER CHILDREN: Think of some letters and the sounds they make. Say some of them aloud with your child(ren). Pick one of the letters and make a new tongue twister out of words that begin with that letter. Build one of the poetic lines backwards. The lines do not have to rhyme. Write down your new tongue twister poem. Have your child(ren) recite it for your video camera.
*At the beginning of this post, I used lots of words that began with the letter “F”.
KidPoWriMo 