April & National Poetry Month!

Apologies for the delay in posts - it's been a busy and exciting time in the NAPS libraries! We're almost at the end of the year (yikes!) and I've been focusing quite a bit on making sure our library collections are ready for their long summer's nap between this year and next.

April was National Poetry Month and we celebrated in the schools by holding a poetry contest - students were encouraged to submit poems to the contest, on any subject and in any style, and we chose two winners from each school. Originally, the winners were going to be "selected", but there were so many wonderful entries that we decided to just choose two names randomly. Our winners received poetry books to further inspire their creativity, and everyone who submitted a poem will have their work featured in the Poetry eBook we're currently working on.

Here's a sneak-peek at the cover:

I'll be sure to let everyone know when the book is ready! 

K-2 

In the younger grades, we've been having a lot of fun exploring poetry. In a few kindergarten classes, we brainstormed our own haikus - kids really enjoyed being able to pick out the subject, and sound out the syllables in each line. Here's an example of our work:

We read poems by Jack Prelutsky, Shel Silverstein, and more! We also made sure to make note of where the poetry books are in our libraries (they're in the nonfiction section under 811) to tie-in the lesson to the library space.

Here's a video from the Shel Silverstein official Youtube channel that we were able to watch: 

The 1st and 2nd graders got a chance to write their own haikus, and many of them submitted them to the poetry contest, so be on the lookout for some wonderful haikus! 

3-5

The older grades also had a wonderful time exploring poetry, with works like Hoops by Robert Burleigh and Follow, Follow by Margaret Singer. We talked about how poetry does not have to be about mushy-gushy stuff, and that as long as its about something you feel strongly about, it works! 

Check this out in the MVLC catalog!

Check this out in the MVLC catalog!

In many classes, we also had time to play one of my favorite games - "Exquisite Corpse"! It sounds a lot more gruesome than it is, I promise! The way you play is: 

• Everyone breaks up into groups of 3 or more.
• One person in the group writes a few lines of a poem on a piece of paper.
• After they are done, they fold the paper over so that only the last line that they wrote is visible.
• Then, they pass it along to the next person in the group, who looks at the one line of the poem and writes their own few lines.
• The second person folds the paper over again so only the last line of what they wrote is visible, and then they pass it along. 
• This goes on until the poem is finished and everyone has had a few turns. 

This was a really fun activity that the kids loved, and it definitely got the creative juices flowing! 

That's all for April, Library Detectives! Stay tuned for information about library MAYhem happening this month!