Poetry ~ in a Few Words by Pattie Bailey While my family complains that I rarely follow Thomas Jefferson’s advice (Never use two words when one will do), I love forms of poetry that are short. The 4-B Kids had begun learning about haiku before the unexpected, lengthy break from school. Based on nature, haiku fit nicely with some of the Idea Catchers the 4-B Kids write in their Planners for homework. One of my favorites was a haiku Ashlyn Moore entered in a contest a few years ago. It was published in a book and probably was published here at the time, but it’s worth another look.

Bright fire in the sky? No, it’s just the sun today, burning all the hours. One of the most difficult things for kids to do when they write is revise. I try to pass on to them something I’ve learned: ‘when you’re done, you’ve only just begun,’ so I was particularly pleased with their efforts to make revisions in their first efforts at haiku.

Kinzee Hemann had written before about the owls. The image in her haiku grabbed me:

The owl is in the grove. Its golden eyes glow in the pitch black sky.

After the long break, transitioning from home to school seemed like a good time to teach about the diamanté. Usually, the first and last lines are antonyms, and, while ‘Home’ and ‘School’ aren’t true antonyms, they have their differences — especially after two weeks at home, two weeks away from school. Knowledge of parts of speech is required for writing diamanté’s. Adjectives, -ing words, and nouns compose the seven lines, with the middle line serving as the transition line — in this case from home to school. We practiced divergent thinking skills as we generated lists of words, and each wrote a rough draft. The following poets did a good job of following the format for the diamanté on their rough drafts.

Diamante by Avery Boyer Home warm~safe boring ~ sleeping ~ dancing Fortnite ~ Netflix ~ lunch ~ drama reading ~ learning ~ challenging loud ~ tired School

diamante by Elly Fogt HOME QUIET~COZY SLEDDING~PAINTING~EATING BASKETBALL~YOUTUBE~PHYSICAL EDUCATION~RECESS LEARNING~CHALLENGING~SITTING LOUD~DRAMATIC SCHOOL

diamante by Ayla Baer HOME Loud ~ Fun Loving ~ Playing ~ Eating Dogs ~ YouTube ~ Lunch ~ Art Reading ~Writing ~ Spelling Crazy ~ Obnoxious School

diamante by Mrs. Bailey Home quiet ~ warm reading ~ working ~ sleeping snacks ~ time ~ schedules ~ kids smiling ~ working ~ creating busy~ happy School

Although I didn’t include “eating” in the third line of my poem, the five pounds in two weeks indicate that eating was on my list of -ing words for ‘home.’ You can tell, too, that School is definitely my happy place.