Poetry Picnic: April 12, 2018

The tradition continues! This week, we finally got some warm spring weather, meaning we were able to head to the park for a poetry picnic on Thursday. I brought sandwiches, apples, brownies, and milk for the big girls, a bottle for the baby, and four books. We spread out a blanket, and the girls ate while I read aloud. Here's what they heard:

• "Casey at the Bat" by Ernest Lawrence Thayer from Great Story Poems edited by Theodoric Jones, illustrated by Frank Bolle
  I've been wanting to read this poem to Miss Muffet (age 4 years, 4 months) because even though I knew she wouldn't understand the whole thing, I thought she would love the way it sounds. I was right. This book also has line drawing illustrations to accompany each poem, so those helped contextualize what was happening. It occurred to me when I was reading it that, despite having gone to see the Durham Bulls every summer since birth, she doesn't know the concept of "three strikes and you're out." We'll have to work on that when we go to a game this summer, and then we can read the poem again.
  
• Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, illustrated by Paul Galdone
  Miss Muffet has a developing interest in the Revolutionary War, so that prompted me to choose this picture book. The illustrations are great - even Bo Peep (age 2.5) enjoyed them - and the rhythm of the poem appealed to all three girls, including Jumping Joan (6 mos.)
  
• All That Sunlight by Charlotte Zolotow, illustrated by Walter Stein
  Miss Muffet received this book as a gift from my mom for Easter. The poems are very short, so we read the entire collection. Poems include child-friendly meditations on colors, friendship, flowers, and weather. A few were familiar to me, but many others were new. This is also a book Miss Muffet is able to read independently, so I may invite her to read to us from it again on a future picnic.
  
• If Not for the Cat by Jack Prelutsky, illustrated by Ted Rand
  This collection of haiku about animals was the hit of the picnic. Miss Muffet and Bo Peep loved calling out the name of each animal as its poem was read, and the illustrations were very engaging for them as well. 

The girls are all at great ages for poetry picnics this year. The older two are great at sitting and listening and the baby isn't big enough yet to get into much trouble. So I am hoping we'll be able to do this twice a month or even weekly as we get into the summer. 

Poetry Picnic: June 1, 2017

We had a poetry picnic on June 1st to welcome the new month. I chose a lot of poems because many of them were so short, but it didn't take the girls as long to eat at this picnic as it had at the previous one, since it was a snack and not lunch, and they became pretty restless. I'd probably choose to read half of these if I had it to do over. (As usual, anthology titles link to Goodreads; poem titles link to online full text when available.)

From The Posy Ring: 

• Where Go the Boats? by Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Fairy Folk by Robert Montgomery Bird
• Discontent by Sarah Orne Jewett 

These were the longest and most difficult-to-understand poems on the list, which is why I started with them. I read poems like these mainly to expose the girls to the language. I don't necessarily expect them to comprehend the meaning at all.

From All the Small Poems and Fourteen More: 

• sun by Valerie Worth
• coins by Valerie Worth
• duck by Valerie Worth
• caterpillar by Valerie Worth
• mushroom by Valerie Worth
• pocket by Valerie Worth

Miss Muffet really responded to these "small poems" and their corresponding illustrations. My favorite was "duck" but she seemed most fond of "coins." I like this collection because the poems are very short, but they are not dumbed down in any way for kids. When we someday begin to study and analyze poetry, these would be good ones to start with.

From Listen, Children, Listen: 

• Blum by Dorothy Aldis
• Numbers by Elizabeth Madox Roberts
• Whispers by Myra Cohn Livingston
• Discovery by Myra Cohn Livingston
• The Sun by John Drinkwater 

Miss Muffet liked "Blum" because she is in a phase where she likes to make up words. She also liked "Numbers", which I chose because I have started doing very basic math with her using Cuisenaire rods. The other poems didn't seem to make any particular impression, though Miss Muffet did seem to think the suggestion in "The Sun" that we tell the sun we are happy was pretty amusing.

From Everything Glistens and Everything Sings:

• The River by Charlotte Zolotow 
• Toward Dark by Charlotte Zolotow
• Raccoon by Charlotte Zolotow
• Ladybug by Charlotte Zolotow 

These poems are a little too pensive for little kids, but since they are short, I read them for the language. "Ladybug" was probably the girls' favorite. 

From Favorite Poems Old and New: 

• Song for a Little House by Christopher Morley
• Swimming by Clinton Scollard
• At the Garden Gate by David McCord
• What Do We Plant? by Henry Abbey
• Old Log House by James S. Tippett

Most of these poems were chosen based on recent discussions I had with Miss Muffet. We've been talking about wanting a bigger house, but trying to enjoy the littleness of our current small one. The pool had just opened, so we were preparing to swim, and Miss Muffet likes to ask about the materials from which things are made so "What Do We Plant?" seemed a natural choice. I chose "At the Garden Gate" because I liked the rhythm, and "Old Log House" because it was about the "old days" which Miss Muffet seems increasingly interested in hearing about. 

From The Year Around:

• Alone by John Farrar 
• June by Douglas Malloch
• That's June by Mary F. Butts
• Stay, June, Stay! by Christina Rossetti (part IV of the linked poem)

These poems all came from the June section of the book. I hope to keep using this book each month to introduce themes related to the current season and upcoming holidays.

From All Together:

• Everybody Says by Dorothy Aldis
• Bad by Dorothy Aldis
• We Know a House by Dorothy Aldis
• Awful Mornings by Dorothy Aldis

This is the most preschool-friendly collection of poetry we have, so I try to include a few poems from it at each picnic. This one had two about having a bad day, as we'd had struggled through the morning. I chose "Everybody Says" because it mentions "Aunt Bee" which is what Miss Muffet sometimes calls my sister. "We Know a House" was a random choice to complement the house-themed poems from Favorite Poems Old and New above.

Poetry Picnic: May 26, 2017

We had a great poetry picnic right before Memorial Day weekend! Here's what we read while we enjoyed lunch and chocolate chip cookies! (Anthology titles link to Goodreads; poem titles link to online full text when available.)

From All Together:

• Night and Morning by Dorothy Aldis
• My Nose by Dorothy Aldis
• Grown-Up People by Dorothy Aldis
• The Seals by Dorothy Aldis
• In May by Dorothy Aldis
• The Storm by Dorothy Aldis
• Goodness Me by Dorothy Aldis

This collection is perfect for preschoolers. I want to work on getting Miss Muffet (age 3.5) to memorize and recite some of these poems herself. "Goodness Me," which is about a child realizing she might be starting to be good all the time, would be a good one to start with since it connects with her own struggle to behave well! 

From Sing a Song of Seasons:

• The Big Swing-Tree is Green Again by Marchette Chute
• The Worm by Ralph Bergengren

I wasn't sure Miss Muffet would understand the humor of "The Worm," but she did seem to laugh appropriately. Both of these poems were taken from the summer section of the book.

From The Year Around: Poems for Children: 

• Remembering Day by Mary Wight Saunders
• Secret by Esther Hull Doolittle 
• Jack-in-the-Pulpit by Ivy O. Eastwick

These poems were taken from the Memorial Day and Summer sections of the book.  I suspect this will be my go-to source for upcoming poetry picnics, since there is something for almost every holiday and occasion.

From Poems to Read to the Very Young:

• Good Morning by Muriel Sipe
• I Saw a Ship a-Sailing
• Near and Far by Kate Cox Goddard

I found this book at a used bookstore and snatched it up because I love the illustrations. We have all of these poems in other anthologies, but the pictures really appeal to Bo Peep (20 mos.) and I chose these poems with her in mind.

From Beneath a Blue Umbrella: 

• In downtown Philadelphia... by Jack Prelutsky
• Idaho Rose... by Jack Prelutsky
• Captain Flea and Sailor Snail... by Jack Prelutsky

We received a copy of this book free at a recent city truck touch event. The poems are Prelutsky originals but they read like nursery rhymes, and the illustrations are by Garth Williams. The individual poems do not have titles, so I have just listed them here by first line. 

Poetry Picnic: April 5, 2017

I looked outside last Wednesday morning and realized it was the perfect spring day to begin a new season of poetry picnics. At the end of the summer last year, Miss Muffet's behavior (mostly running away from me) made us put the picnics on hold for a while, but I'm glad we started up again because this one was just lovely. We ate pasta salad and cake, and I read the poems listed below between feeding bites to Bo Peep.

(Anthology titles link to Goodreads; poem titles link to online full text when available.)

From A Book of Americans: 

• Abraham Lincoln by Rosemary and Stephen Vincent Benét
  My husband read a story about President Lincoln to Miss Muffet from My Bookhouse the night before the picnic, so I decided this would be an appropriate choice. I don't think she fully understood the poem, but she enjoyed hearing Lincoln's name again. 

From Water Pennies: 

• A Song to Sing to a Ladybird Landing on Your Sleeve on a Cloudy Day by N.M. Bodecker
  A lot of Bodecker's poems are too sophisticated for a three-year-old, but this one, about asking a ladybug to fly up to God and ask him to bring out the sunshine, was very sweet. Miss Muffet was interested in the fact that ladybird is another word for ladybug. 

From Handsprings:

• Handsprings by Douglas Florian
• What I Love About Spring by Douglas Florian
• Sometimes Spring by Douglas Florian

I like Florian's way of playing with language. These poems were not as punny as some of his others, but I thought they were a nice way to talk about spring. Miss Muffet especially liked it in the last poem when spring was called "daffodilly." 

From Listen, Children, Listen:

• The Swing by Robert Louis Stevenson
  We sing a version of this around the house a lot, so Miss Muffet recognized this poem right away. I include Stevenson a lot when we do these picnics because his poems are so appropriate for preschoolers. Miss Muffet had just been on a swing the day before the picnic, too, so she got a kick out of hearing this one.
• Some One by Walter de la Mare
  I remember this poem from childhood, so it jumped out at me when I was flipping through the book and I decided to add it to my list. I don't think Miss Muffet got what it was about, but the rhythm of it is very pleasing.
• The Pasture by Robert Frost
  Miss Muffet also remembered this one, and I'm sure that's because it's one of my favorites and I read it a lot. It always make me think of spring, even though the reference to raking leaves away makes the setting more likely to be Fall, which is also what the book's illustration suggests. Personally, I just love the line, "I shan't be gone long. You come too." 
• Spring by William Blake
  Miss Muffet didn't like this poem as much as the others, but I read it mostly for me anyway. It's become a favorite in the past few years. 

From Everything Glistens and Everything Sings:

• Yellow by Charlotte Zolotow
• Blue by Charlotte Zolotow 

I have always loved Charlotte Zolotow and I can't name too many other authors who wrote as succinctly and emotionally about everyday things. These two color poems appear side by side in this collection and they have almost identical structures, so it was nice to read them together. Miss Muffet had a big grin during both of these - especially the one about blue, which is one of her favorite colors.

Poetry Picnic: August 5, 2016

We had a poetry picnic in May, which I'm just realizing I never posted about! Oops! I also tried to have one in June, but it wound up being a complete train wreck. Little Miss Muffet was in an especially contrary mood, and the end result was a lot of crying and almost no reading of poems. It took me a while to feel ready to try again, but last week, I baked some brownies, packed up some lunch, and marched us all over to the park. We sat ourselves at a picnic table at the top of the hill in an area Little Miss Muffet calls "the forest" and had (mostly) a nice time. (Our picnic spot, occupied by Miss Muffet's doll, Baby Robin, is shown in the picture above.)

For previous picnics, I have brought books with me, written the poems out by hand, and typed them up and printed them out, but this time I just collected them the night before in a Google doc and read them aloud from my phone. It didn't seem to bother Miss Muffet, and it made planning so much easier. I selected the poems based on Miss Muffet's requests, and some of her recent interests. The poems are as follows:

From Poems of Childhood: 

• The Sugar-Plum Tree by Eugene Field

My husband found this poem for me after Miss Muffet requested a poem about a gingerbread man and I couldn't find one I liked. This poem has a gingerbread dog, which seemed to please her just as well.

From All Together: 

• The Sad Shoes by Dorothy Aldis
• I Have to Have It by Dorothy Aldis
• Alone by Dorothy Aldis
• What They Are For by Dorothy Aldis

I like Dorothy Aldis because her poems are short and very relatable for preschoolers. "The Sad Shoes" reminded me of conversations Miss Muffet and I have had about her old corduroy shoes, which only fit her for a short time and are now being saved for Bo Peep. I chose "I Have to Have It" because of Miss Muffet's affinity for sticks, and "Alone" because I often see Miss Muffet standing on the sidelines, observing a group of kids without ever joining in. "What They Are For" just seemed like her kind of poem, since she often asks about uses for different objects.

From Peacock Pie: 

• Bread and Cherries by Walter de la Mare

Miss Muffet has enjoyed both fresh bread and cherries this summer, so this poem jumped out at me.  I wanted to include more de la Mare, but I found most of the rest of the poems in this collection too complex for her right now. 

From Favorite Poems Old and New: 

• The Little Jumping Girls by Kate Greenaway
• Ring-A-Ring by Kate Greenaway
• Block City by Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Postman by Anonymous
• A Dragonfly by Eleanor Farjeon
• Vegetables by Eleanor Farjeon

There is an adapted version of "The Little Jumping Girls" in a vintage kindergarten-level basal reader that I picked up at a used bookstore. Miss Muffet enjoys that version, so I thought she would appreciate the original even more. Since "Ring-a-Ring" is similar - and because we have been playing Ring-a-Round-the Rosie in the pool, I added that one to my list as well. "Block City" perfectly describes how Miss Muffet plays with blocks, and "The Postman" was meant to help answer some of Miss Muffet's ongoing questions about how mail is delivered. The Farjeon poems were included both because I love Farjeon (she wrote "Morning Has Broken" and "People Look East!") and because Miss Muffet has been interested in dragonflies and vegetables.

Poetry Picnic: April 26, 2016

It took a while for me to get around to doing another poetry picnic, but we did finally pull one together for a day when it was warm enough and not too rainy to be outside. We baked brownies again as our special treat, and even the baby got to have her bottle outside on the blanket. I decided to hand-write the poems into a little booklet and decorate it, even though I have minimal artistic skills, with my own drawings. My husband pointed out that it looked like the work of a precocious third grader, but I still enjoyed doing it, and it didn't require me to have anything printed out.

In any case, here are the poems which I copied into the book and their respective sources, with links to the full text of poems for which it is available online.

From The Random House Book of Poetry for Children

• Open House by Aileen Fisher

From A First Poetry Book

• The Park by James J. Tippett (The entire poem appears as a quotation quite far down the linked page.) 
• Mud by John Smith (On the linked page, this entire poems appears at the end of a book review.)

From Read-Aloud Rhymes for the Very Young

• Yellow Butter by Mary Ann Hoberman
• Makers by Nancy Dingman Watson
• A Spike of Green by Barbara Baker
• Umbrellas by Barbara Juster Esbensen

From The Oxford Book of Children's Verse in America

• Who Has Seen the Wind? by Christina Rossetti
• Milking Time by Elizabeth Madox Roberts

From A Pizza the Size of the Sun

• A Pizza the Size of the Sun by Jack Prelutsky 

Miss Muffet seemed to enjoy every poem and agreed each time I asked if she wanted to hear one a second time. Unfortunately, the landscapers were out mowing the lawn at the park, so there were distractions, and rain was also looming on the horizon, so I felt rushed to get through the booklet and get everyone's lunch finished so we wouldn't end up getting caught in the rain. The picnic ended abruptly with Miss Muffet taking off running with the poetry booklet and me having to chase her down. 

Despite the chaos that a toddler brings to a civilized poetry picnic, however, I enjoyed the experience of sharing these poems. I had never read "Milking Time", but found that it reminded me a lot of Robert Frost, and I was pleased to remember there is a poem about pizza, since that is Miss Muffet's favorite and she specifically asked for a pizza poem. I have also never really liked "Yellow Butter" before, but found that really figuring out how to read it aloud properly made all the difference. Miss Muffet got a kick out of "Umbrellas," too, because it talks about a tulip, a flower she has been very interested in this spring. I have held onto the booklet, too, so we can perhaps revisit the poems before we choose new ones for our next picnic. 

Speaking of the next one, it looks like we're going to have a very rainy couple of weeks coming up, but I hope to get a May poetry picnic going soon - maybe even two!

Poetry Picnic: March 23, 2016

Last week, I took Little Miss Muffet (age 2) and Little Bo Peep (nearly 6 months) to the park for a poetry picnic. It was a pretty last-minute idea. I was reading randomly selected poems to Bo Peep the night before while she had her bottle, and Miss Muffet said she also wanted to hear some poems. I asked her if she would like to read poems over lunch outside and thus, the idea for the poetry picnic was born.

In retrospect, I think it would have been more useful to leave myself a few days for planning. As it turned out, I had to spend over an hour on the morning of the picnic figuring out which poems to read, and which books we needed to take with us. In the ensuing chaos, a sippy cup was packed upside down in the bag containing the books, and as a result, Come Hither by Walter de la Mare will never be the same. Next month - since I plan to do this at least monthly throughout the warm weather months - I will get the poems picked ahead of time, and possibly even print them out in a single disposable booklet so as to avoid further book-related disasters.

In the end I chose 12 poems, and we ended up reading 13. Some of the original twelve selections were based on subjects Miss Muffet said she wanted to read about - lambs, spiders, grasshoppers, grass, bathtubs, and birds - and all of the others were poems on a Spring theme. All of the poems I read are listed below in the order in which we read them. All poems that are available online are linked.

From Come Hither: 

• The Lamb (#94) by William Blake
• This Is the Key (#483) (Note: The linked version is slightly different from the one we used.) 

From Piping Down the Valleys Wild: 

• The Prayer of the Little Ducks by Carmen Bernos de Gasztold (This was the one I had not planned to read, but which caught my eye at the last second.)
• The Bird's Nest by John Drinkwater 
• The Owl by William Jay Smith
• Mrs. Spider by Myra Cohn Livingston 

From Handsprings: 

• Spring is When 

From Read-Aloud Rhymes for the Very Young

• Singing in the Spring by Ivy O. Eastwick
• Before the Bath by Corinna Marsh
• An Explanation of the Grasshopper by Vachel Lindsay

From National Geographic's Book of Nature Poetry: 

• Stars by A.E. Housman
• I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud by Williams Wordsworth
• The Pasture by Robert Frost 

Some of the poems, such as "The Lamb," "Stars," and "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" - were way over Little Miss Muffet's head, but it didn't seem to make a difference to her. She listened just as eagerly to these more complex pieces as she did to the shorter, more accessible ones. (And she actually did get the gist of the lamb poem, as she keeps telling me that "God made lambies.") I read the shorter poems twice, just as I would sing a song or perform an action rhyme in story time, and I think that helped her engage with them a little bit more. On the way home from the park, she said that her favorite poem was "Before the Bath," but in telling others about the picnic days later, she has spoken mostly of the poems about birds and the photograph of a rainbow that happened to share a page with "The Pasture."

Little Bo Peep spent the duration of the picnic in the carseat, which I took out of the stroller and set down in the grass. She likes the rhythm and rhyme of poetry and was perfectly happy to sit and listen but she didn't have much of a reaction beyond sitting contentedly. I expect this will change as we go on, and as she becomes more mobile and more interested in active participation.

All in all, I would say our first poetry picnic was a great success. I'm looking forward to planning our next one soon!