Category: News

How to Make a Shamrock Lucky Charm Poem for St. Patrick’s Day

St. Patrick's Day Poetry Activity

St. Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland, a country known for shamrocks, leprechauns and lucky charms. People celebrate St Patrick’s Day on 17th March, by wearing green clothes, and pinning a shamrock to their outfit. A shamrock is the Irish name for clover, and it’s always been considered lucky to find one with four leaves instead of the usual three!

This year, I’m going to show you how to make your own lucky shamrock charm to wear on St Patrick’s Day, or to give to someone you love!

The word ‘charm’ comes from the French ‘charme’, which means song. Here is an ancient charm poem from Ireland that explains why a four-leaved shamrock is so lucky:

One leaf is for fame,
And one leaf is for wealth,
And one is for a faithful love,
And one to bring you glorious health.

Simile and Metaphor Poetry Lesson

Making Comparisons with Simile and Metaphor — A Poetry Lesson Plan

This lesson plan uses descriptive examples to explain how to distinguish between simile and metaphor. Students will analyze poem excerpts to identify comparative phrases and pinpoint occurrences of similes and metaphors. Then, they will create their own similes and metaphors to explore how poets choose whether to use a simile or metaphor in a specific poem.

What’s a Simile? What’s a Metaphor?

Similes and metaphors are poetic techniques that let us compare two different things in a descriptive way. Here are some examples.

Poetic Air Freshener Craft Activity

Make your own air freshener

Hands-on projects help bring poetry to life for young children. In the poem “The Armpit of Doom,” the speaker is experiencing the horrible sights and smells of her brother’s disgusting, stinky bedroom. Have you ever smelled something so bad that it literally makes you want to vomit? All you want to do is smell something good to erase that odor from your mind! In this project, we’ll create homemade air fresheners that you can keep for your own self-defense, or give to that stinky-room person in your life as a special gift from you to them. They may not appreciate it… but everyone else will!

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

Did you know that March 2 is the birthday of Dr. Seuss? The full name of this famous writer and illustrator was Theodor Seuss Geisel. “Dr. Seuss” is a pseudonym, or “pen name,” that Theodor Geisel used for his books. You have probably read many of Geisel’s books, which usually feature rhyming poetry and whimsical drawings. Here are some of his most famous books:

Dr. Seuss

Theodor Geisel was born in Massachusetts in 1904. His grandparents were immigrants from Germany. When he was a young boy, Geisel’s mother would help him fall asleep at night by singing rhyming songs that she remembered from her own childhood. Geisel took an art class in high school. He also became the editor of his college humor magazine, where he wrote articles and drew cartoons. Later he found work as an illustrator for advertisements, drawing scary-looking cartoon insects to sell a pesticide called Flit. Giesel enrolled in the Army during World War II, where he produced war posters and animated training films. During this time, he also drew political cartoons that expressed his ideas about the war.

Fairy Tales and Poetry

Often when they’re asked to write a poem, children can get stuck at the first hurdle: What to write about. By using a familiar starting point, you can kick-start your class’s creativity by giving an easy way in—and a great place to begin is with the fairy tales they’ve grown up with!

Many fairy tales are even older than the printing press. Originally, they were passed on from person to person and generation to generation only orally. (Once books became commonplace, people such as the Brothers Grimm were able to collect the stories from people  and commit them to paper.) A great way for people to remember stories in those days was to turn them into rhyming poems or songs—often called ballads—so they could pass them on from one person to the next. This meant that each person could also change the story when they told it, to keep it interesting and relevant (or if they had forgotten a bit!).

Once the stories were written down, they weren’t as easy to change, because the printed word was there for everyone to see. This activity is all about creating a rhyming version of a well-known fairy tale story, and memorizing it at the same time.

Submit your limerick to win a prize!

Whether you are Irish, have a wee bit of Irish blood, like the color green or simply like to create limericks, Golly Gee-pers! Weekly wants to hear from you!

Create a limerick about civility, kindness or manners and the best one will win a set of award winning Table Manners Cards along with an official Golly Gee-pers award certificate.

Click here to read the official rules and find out how to enter the contest.

To view the prize go to: www.gollygee-pers.com.   The winning limerick will be posted on their blog,  Facebook page and twitter on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2013.

Onomatopoeia Poetry Lesson Plan

This lesson plan uses excerpts from famous poems to demonstrate how onomatopoeia can be used in a poem. Students will closely read the poem excerpts to identify the onomatopoeia words. They will then choose three onomatopoeia words from a suggested list to use in a poem of their own.

comic book sound effects

Onomatopoeia refers to words that sound exactly or almost exactly like the thing that they represent. Many words that we use for animal or machine noises are onomatopoeia words, such as “moo” for the sound a cow makes and “beep-beep” for the noise of a car horn. Words like “slurp,” “bang,” and “crash” are also onomatopoeia words. Even some ordinary words like “whisper” and “jingling” are considered onomatopoeia because when we speak them out loud, they make a sound that is similar to the noise that they describe.

Poetry often uses onomatopoeia words because they are so descriptive. This type of word helps us to imagine the story or scene that is happening in the poem.

Here are two examples that show how famous poets have used onomatopoeia in their poems. In these poem excerpts, the onomatopoeia words are underlined.

Pony Magazine 2013 Poetry Contest

Pony Magazine Poetry Contest for Kids

Live in the UK? Love horses and ponies? Creative? Want to get your writing published in a magazine? PONY magazine is offering the fantastic chance for you to become a published poet! Whether you have been writing for years or are a total beginner – they would love to read your horsey poetry!

To enter the competition all you need to do is get creative and write a poem about anything to do with horses. Have a favourite riding moment? A beautiful pony you love? Tell them about it!

Please Don’t Read This Poem: A Poetry Activity Using Invisible Ink

There’s nothing so exciting as a secret!  That’s why private messages written on folded paper, passed to friends who you know will keep your secret, are so thrilling… There’s a chance the note might get intercepted, and the information will get leaked!

This is a secret note

The following poem is about a poem that nobody is supposed to read. It’s a secret, but not a very good one, because everyone keeps reading it, even when the author asks them to stop!

Six Great Ideas for President’s Day Poems

George Washington

Presidents Day is celebrated on the 3rd Monday of the month every February in the USA. It marks the birthday of the first American President George Washington (which was actually on February 22nd, but we like to have our holidays on a Monday!)

In fact, that’s Great Idea Number One:

  • Write a poem called ‘I’d like to have a holiday on a Monday!’ Think about the annoying things about Mondays, and the awesome things about holidays. What do you normally do on a Monday? What could you do differently if it were a holiday?