Educating Risa

It was World Poetry Day recently (March 21), and my friend Alicia wrote up some fun ways to celebrate. Both she and my friend Tiffany reported “Dice poetry” being a big hit with their kids, so I thought we’d give it a go this morning as well. I went first, picking a topic I love (soccer), and rolling the die to determine how many words in each line. I rolled 4, then a 3, then 3, and made up the following:

Gareth was keen to have a go, so he chose his topic (woolly mammoths) and grabbed the die:

He rolled a 2, and started his poem, rolling a 6 and a 4 and dictating each line to me as he went along. It was a bit tricky getting the exact number of words correct, but by telling me what he wanted to say, we were able to paraphase without loss of meaning. (e.g., his final line he wanted to say “The dinosaurs were already extinct, and then the mammoths went extinct too” so we played around with various phrases until he found a 4-word phrase he liked.)

Gareth then wanted to add a picture to his poem, so while he worked on that, Daegan and I created another dice poem. His topic? Dinosaurs—what else? Daegan’s rolls were surprisingly non-random: a whole lot of 1s and 5s.

Daegan then copied his poem (he needed no help from me with his dice poem other than transcribing what he said) and drew pictures to accompany it:

Here’s the boys’ finished work. This was a great activity! Thanks, Alicia!