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Concrete Poems, Landscapes, and Howling at the Moon

Here we are in the second week of April, National Poetry Month, and Eliot’s “cruelest month.” At FLOW we have been enjoying our Zoom writing workshops, book clubs, and weekly free-writes. For those of you wanting to supplement your kiddos’ remote learning, below are some more writing activities:


1. Ask your kiddo to write a concrete poem. Concrete poems do not have to rhyme and can be about any subject, but they are written in the shape of the object of the poem. Here is a link to some examples:

For younger writers you could provide a subject they could easily draw such as home, flower, etc. For older kiddos, let them challenge themselves with their own ideas.

2. Richard Blanco, an American poet, said that things all have a natural, emotional, and physical landscape. Ask your kiddos to pick any object and write three stanzas about it. In each stanza ask them to address the natural, emotional and physical landscape of their chosen thing. Before they begin, encourage them to free-write for ten minutes about their chosen object. For example, if they choose home as their object you can ask them to write about what home makes them feel, what their home looks like, and how homes relate to the natural world. Try to encourage them to use sensory language, delicious details, and juicy words.

3. Ask your kiddo to take a look at the moon and write down any words they could use to describe the moon using all of their senses. Also ask them to listen outside at 8:00 as people howl at the moon and howl in celebration of all of the helpers (they can join in the howling!)

Ask kiddos to write a poem that captures this unique moment and try to use onomatopoeia in their poems.

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