Dawn - I'm so glad you posted this as I've not been getting to my PM's and just saw you'd sent one. I am sorry! I've been under the weather with some health concerns and the start of school paired with my dh's traveling has left me spent... but enough of that
on to more interesting, helpful talk!:D My oldest ds had come to enjoy poetry so much through HOD by the time he started PHFHG. Still, when we started the creative writing lessons in PHFHG, it was not something that came naturally to him. I actually think this is fairly common among boys. They tend to want to express things literally, and that doesn't always make for the loveliest of poems.
We had this exact same experience that gerogiamomof3 described so well here...
georgiamomof3 wrote:Hang in there!
Last year when my dd (then 4th grade) started writing the poems/paragraphs for the Preparing poetry, I worked with her a lot. We talked a lot about the topic and compared it to Robert Louis Stevenson's poem. I would guide dd and would write the 'rough' drafts on paper or a wipe board for her as we worked through the assignment together. Doing it this way allowed us to talk about rhyming words, meter, the 'feel' of the poems, etc. I would initially write everything she said, then we would go back and discuss each line to see if it made sense or was written clearly enough for others to understand. Many times, especially at the beginning of the year, I felt as if I were writing the assignments for her, but I found that each week, dd became better and better at writing and expressing her own thoughts without so much guidance from me. She has actually become a wonderful writer and has confidence now in expressing herself. Some of her writings from last year were very impressive, and the best thing of all was that she LOVED it! It was a great way for us to work and create together and I feel we were both blessed by the time we took at the beginning of the year to learn this particular skill.
We too had to pair together and brainstorm on a marker board, make a plan for his poem, and I'd add a word or words here or there to help out with rhythm, rhyme, and description. It really helped for us to expressively read the Robert Louis Stevenson poem several times before the start of the writing session, to get the "feel" of it. It helped to read it all and insert his ideas for the replacement lines too, and slowly with time it became more obvious to him when his words weren't matching the "feel" of the poem.
I figured out it was very important to help him choose topics he knew enough about to write. I remember one time he chose to write about our driveway. I actually saw him look out the window and name the first thing he saw (our driveway) when asked to write on a nature topic.
I tried hard to find the good in each of his ideas, however, especially at first so as not to discourage him. I told him looking out the window was a wonderful idea, and we took a tour of the "view" out the windows of our house. As we were walking, I asked him which things he could tell me at least 5 interesting things about that he was somewhat passionate about. When we came to the bluejays on the ground eating our birdseed (a gift from the Lord they were there I know
), he was inspired. Anyway, choosing a topic they really do know well is very important and worth a little sorting through.
Something I was inspired about or knew well was not always the thing he was inspired about or knew well (which I made a concentrated effort NOT to let frustrate me). For example, I thought he could describe our trip to the Black Hills when we went to the Woolly Mammoth site. He didn't remember it.
NOT a good topic choice for him, though very interesting to me.
My ds really balks at rewriting things. He finds it somewhat depressing, which I know could just be him, but in case it could also be a stumbling block for your ds, rather than having your ds rewrite his poems, I think I'd just enjoy choosing a topic, brainstorming together first on markerboard, narrowing down the best ideas/lines/words, and then making a plan together. Perhaps at first even having him copy the lines you've co-written from the marker board. I looked at the time when he got to the writing part of it as the time to let it be "good enough". I also realized I needed to find a balance of helping and taking over during our planning sessions, as well as watch the time, as the longer it went, the less excited he was about it, and the more he just wanted me to write it without him (which sadly I would have enjoyed - I love to write - of course then it would have been my poem instead of his poem). I tried to make sure not to "fix" everything in his poems, as the poems weren't really his then, and they became less creative and pretty generic.
I'd say 10-15 minutes of brainstorming is a fair amount of time to spend. This is a good question! I hope you've found some encouragement here in knowing many of us found our dc's first attempts at poetry to be less than stellar, but by the end of PHFHG, the results were worth the faltering start! HTH!!!
In Christ,
Julie
) Grant's poems were all about the hackberry tree in our yard, the brushpile fort that he spent hours making with friends, hiking in the pasture, riding his bike down the road to go fishing with the dogs, etc... I love that you could see his personality and favorite things through his writing!