
Let’s just start with the grand finale! As a recap of all we’d learned over several weeks of poetry study, Sprite made a poetic devices mobile. This is an idea we adapted from a lesson in Learning Language Arts Through Literature.
At the top is the object Sprite chose to describe — her cat Maxie. Hanging down from Maxie are various examples of poetic language. She had the clever idea of using cat shapes from Cat Coloring Pages to write her poetic devices on. (Just print them 2 per page for a smaller size.)

You can see that one side has the type of figurative language and the other side has her example.
Maxie goes “grrrrr” at strangers. / Onomotopeia
Maxie has the minimum skills to be a cat. / Pun
We used some lessons from LLATL to study poetry, but the bulk of our material was something I wrote myself. That unit study for poetry is available at Homeschool Share, and even though it’s been over there for a long time, we only recently completed it ourselves.
It is based on The Random House Book of Poetry for Children (click to read a full review) and goes through several poetic devices such as personification, alliteration, imagery, etc.
Here are Sprite’s use of personification and her notes on the same topic.
Here are photos of two of the free notebooking pages you can download over at Homeschool Share. The graphics are especially designed to match the poems to be copied.
I’ve got a lens about poetry in homeschool.
And for more creative writing ideas, including poetic language, visit WordSmithery over at SmallWorld.
What a great lesson and what a great format. We will have a big guinea pig instead of a cat. Many thanks for this.
Great mobile idea! And thanks for the link love!
.-= Sarah at SmallWorld´s last blog ..Weekly Wrap-Up =-.
I love the mobile..they’re wonderful. I may try this with my youngest.
.-= DebD´s last blog ..Blogging and Facebook =-.
I LOVE these ideas! Caleb is about ready for a poetry go around, which makes me SO glad you posted this! :o)
.-= Cindy´s last blog ..Can You Hear the Sound? =-.
@Paula- Ooohh.. guinea pig! That sounds fantastic. 😉
@Sarah-You’re welcome, dear. Your writing series is well done. Glad to pass it on.
@DebD- If you try it, be sure to blog it and share a link. I want to see!
@Cindy- So glad that it inspires. I will look forward to seeing YOUR entry on poetry.
I’m going to visit every one of those links 🙂 I just pulled our poetry stuff off the shelf. Until now, we’ve just read poetry regularly, and used some fun poems for recitation, but haven’t done much writing of it. So… I’m looking forward to seeing your lens as I always love them, and looking at the different resources you’ve mentioned 🙂
Amy in Peru
.-= Amy´s last blog ..I wholeheartedly agree… =-.
Ohhhhh…ahhhhhh… have I mentioned that you amaze me?? Sprite is learning so much, and in ways that will really help her remember. Thank you for the oodles of wonderful ideas!
.-= Wendy @ Sun-Kissed Scholars´s last blog ..Minnie Pearl West Burnside =-.
So neat! We will be doing a dragon one!! My dd adores dragons… everything dragons!! NOW, she is excited about doing this project! 🙂 Thanks Jimmie, for keeping us all inspired.