Here's A Little Poem

I've been enjoying sharing this lovely book with my little guys this week. Jane Yolan and Andrew Fusek Peters' anthology of poems for the very young is full of delightful rhymes about mud, ice cream, bugs, rain, grandmas and grandpas, baby brothers, swings, kites, and good night kisses. The poets range from Langston Hughes to Bobbi Katz and Margaret Mahy. The illustrations are bouncy and joyful, showing children doing all they do with vim and vigor. We love this book! Here's what Punkin is reading in this picture:

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday to you!
Squashed tomatoes and stew!
Bread and butter
In the gutter
Happy Birthday to you!

-traditional British street rhyme

This week I am hosting Friday Poetry right here at a wrung sponge. I am inviting you to do something a little different. We share our favorites poems here in blogs every week, but why not take it a step further and go into the face to face world? Back in September I posted about our sixth graders doing something they call "Poetry in Place". They chose favorite poems, typed them up, printed them and posted them all over the school in appropriate places. Jack Prelutsky's A Pizza the Size of the Sun in in the kitchen by the microwave, for instance. I thought it would be great fun to do the same thing with all of the Friday Poetry bloggers. What if we all, all over the country (world?) shared our favorite poems in public places?

Here's how I explained where we got the idea from at our school: The sixth grade teacher found this project idea in Georgia Heard's book Awakening the Heart; Exploring Poetry in Elementary and Middle School. I have mentioned this book before when I was posting about Nanci Atwell's Lessons That Change Writers. Heard tells about how she first encountered the New York City Poetry in Motion Project when she found a poem posted on a public bus. She also found poems posted in the women's rest room at the Columbia University's Teachers College. A secretary started doing it at the Teacher's College. Every week she posted a different poem. She had women from all over the college coming in to her office and asking for copies of the poems she posted. Once a man came in and when she asked if he had been in the woman's restroom he admitted that he was the window washer and he was reading the poems through the window as he worked. He wanted a copy of one for his daughter.

Can you think of a place where one of your favorite poems could be shared? Print it out or pick up a pen and copy it onto paper and hang it up! I printed out a few poems from Here's A Little Poem and shared them with my son's daycare teachers. They are going to put them up on the bulletin boards to share with the children. The poems I thought they would especially like include Late Last Night by Michael Rosen, Mud by Flanders and Swann, and The No No Bird by Andrew Fusek Peters. What would you like to share? Leave a comment and put your link in the Mr. Linky below.