Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Magnet Madness

A colleague asked if I could think of any way our particular teens could get involved in our Poetry in the Park event in May. I mulled over options ranging from the ridiculous (open mic poetry! thousands will come! let's do it!) to the completely simple (poetry display! that's enough, right?) and finally settled on one of my favorite things in all the land: Magnet Poetry.

Now, that program is nearly three months away, and I simply can't wait to do a magnetic poetry program until then. So, I'm planning two more. One today with my book club, and one with my teen moms (I'm running out of ways to make cover letter writing fun, haha).

I happily perused one of my favorite sites, Craftster and found links to a two very helpful resources.

The first is HP's creative site, and I found a list of Shakespearean words for use with magnetic poetry -- perfect for our discussion of Alex Flinn's Beastly.

The second is a list of basic words teachers use with new readers. The list works quite well for constructing simple poetry, and I think it's an option that I'll have available at the larger magnetic poetry event in May.

Armed with my lists, I feel rather excited about this activity.

Other materials needed include:
*Self-adhesive magnetic strips
*Scissors
*Clean tins for storing the magnets (think Altoid tins)
*Poetic teens :)