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Poetry Props

Poetry Props

It's rhyme time as students illustrate and act out lively images from a poem and demonstrate how to put poetry in motion.

Lesson Plan

Supplies Needed

Gather all the supplies needed to bring your craft ideas to life! From paints and markers to glue and scissors, our crafts section has everything to spark creativity and make every project truly special.

  • White Paper

Steps

  • Step 1

    Read some lively rhyming poems aloud to students. Examples might include "Hey Diddle Diddle," "The Little Turtle" by Vachel Lindsay, or "Hug O'War"" by Shel Silverstein. Have students listen for the rhymes and note the movements in the lively poem. Then ask students to choose one of the poems to illustrate.

  • Step 2

    Ask students to illustrate an image from their selected poem. Have them sketch it on paper using a light amount of crayon. Then have them try to create a sense of movement that spotlights what made this poem lively. For example, they could add squiggly lines around a spider climbing up the waterspout or bent knees to indicate a jumping jack. Now ask them to use the crayon watercolor resist technique to complete their art. They would draw by pressing firmly with crayon, intentionally making a thick layer of wax on the paper. Then they would paint over the entire drawing with watercolors and watch how the wax resists the watery paint. When the paint is dry have students cut or tear out their drawings and glue them to paper.

  • Step 3

    Ask students to showcase their art while they or an adult or older student read their selected poem aloud. They can dramatize how they imagine the movement they showed in their art.

Standards

ARTS: Explore and invent art-making techniques and approaches. 

LA: Add drawings or other visual displays to written text to clarify ideas, thoughts, and feelings. 

Adaptations

Challenge students to create an original lively rhyming poem, then illustrate it in a way that suggests movement.

Create small groups of students and have them write and perform an original scene that incorporates the poetry props they created. Perhaps the itsy-bitsy spider climbed so high that he met the cow jumping over the moon.