Found Poetry

I cut out several words from magazines. Then I put them onto single sided laminating sheets, put colored paper behind it and recut them out to make them durable. I decided to color code the words. This is not part of regular found poetry, but I thought we might want to use the words for something else in the future, and I thought that maybe if the kids looked up the words, they might learn different types of words like adjective, adverb, article, noun, etc. Once the words were created, the kids could play with them, move them about, and make poetry on the spot!

Before I was done with the words, my daughter asked if she could make a poem. I reminded her that we had just gone on a trip to see the salmon run and spent the day at the river. Could she make a poem while thinking about that day?  Here is what she created:

A River

Frost arrived

All sleep

We play

One traveler's favorite voice

The only change my daughter made, was the apostrophe on the word travelers. She wanted to indicate that the children's playing voices were one traveler's favorite sound.

Then, a few days later, the kids and I watched a short video I took of the salmon attempting to jump up the large waterfall. We watched in silence, while we all thought about the sounds, visions, feelings and memories of that day. Then we all dove into the pile of words and picked out what we were thinking about. I asked for a set of three lines from each of us. My daughter gave four. Then we put them into an order that we felt made sense. Here is our group poem:

Wish for a River

natural adventure

open exploration

and great kids

launch area

electric bounce

wet, fresh season

happiness, warm, good

uncommon, extreme, and charming

all unique

we wish for a river 

I love that we were able to make a poem within 5 minutes without fear or hesitation. We had fun. We worked alone and together. The colored words looked pretty. We ended up with a nice poem.