Day 15 – From Weird Al to Weird Alice everyone loves a parody.

On a daily basis, my kids and I poke fun at songs on the radio by changing up the lyrics. Our most recent one would be banned from the kiddies’ ears except that they have found a clever way to self censor. I’ll tell you our lyrics because I can’t even say what they say out loud. Every time it comes on they sing something different – I’m hungry and I know it. I’m (insert your name here) and I know it. Or the totally ludicrous because it really is nonsense I’m Pepsi and I know it. Good rhyming skills, Layali! This gets followed by I got fashion  in my pants and I ain’t afraid to show it.

In writing, this is called a parody. It’s fun, relatively easy and highly entertaining. You know you’ve succeeded in writing a good one when people start singing it over the original when it comes on the radio. Everyone’s favorite parodist (that’s a real word, I looked it up) has got to be Weird Al. He has recorded 170 parodies of tunes everyone knows. The first one I remember hearing was Another One Rides the Bus to the tune of Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust. My kids love I’m Fat which makes fun of Michael Jackson’s Bad. He is so popular that people make parody videos of his parody songs like Couch Potato, his version of Eminem’s Lose Yourself. 

But Weird Al is far from the first too popularize the parody. All of the poems found in Alice in Wonderland are actually parodies of poems that children were required to read and memorize in school. Lewis Carroll delighted his young readers by poking fun of the rhymes they were assigned to read with lighter, more humorous versions. Here is an example:

The Bat
Lewis Carroll

Twinkle, twinkle, little bat
How I wonder what you’re at!
Up above the world you fly
Like a tea-tray in the sky.

I’m certain that I don’t have to tell you the original from which this rhyme came. If you don’t know it, I suggest you go back to kindergarten.

Now it’s your turn. Pick a song or a poem that you like, or maybe one you don’t like. Create your own parody of it. If you need more help, check out this link from ehow.com entitled How to Create a Parody Poem for Kids. After you’ve written your parody, post it in the comments or on the Little Poets facebook page. But first, check out MY parody from the karaoke finale of Shrek.

Sing along to my parody of Shrek!

Day 14 – The Dog Did Not Eat My Homework Poem

You wake up this morning after you’ve hit the snooze button twice already. You put on your clothes and look for your socks. It’s late. All you can find are one blue sock and one red sock so you put them on. Then you realize as you are stuffing your books into your backpack that you didn’t finish your homework. Oh no. This is the second time this week and your hand still hurts from writing “I will not forget to do my homework” 100 times on the whiteboard. It’s time to think fast. You must convince your teacher that it wasn’t your fault that you didn’t do your homework. 

After three semesters of not always finishing your homework, you know three things about your teacher.

1. She listens to you longer when you use lots of interesting adjectives.
2. She likes compound sentences.
3. She loves the number 3.

You have a plan. You are going to write her a poem that explains just why you didn’t finish your homework. Remember a compound sentence is two simple sentences  connected by words like and, nor, but, or, yet, and so. Give her three good reasons why you didn’t finish your homework. Don’t forget to use adjectives that will take her mind off of your bad habit of not turning in your work on time. And oh yes, she hates plagiarizing, so don’t use this poem:

My Dog Ate My Homework

My dog ate my homework. That mischievous pup got hold of my homework and gobbled it up. My dog ate my homework. It’s gonna be late. I guess that the teacher will just have to wait. My dog ate my homework. He swallowed it whole. I shouldn’t have mixed it with food in his bowl. –Kenn Nesbitt

Day 13 – Who needs a guitar when you can play Haiku Hero?

If you can count to seven, then you can write a haiku.

A haiku? How odd. One poem, Three lines, Five, Seven and Five Syllables. And I’ve found a little program that does the counting for you. Not only that, it will give you constraints such as a word that you must use in your haiku or that you may only use one and two syllable words.

I suggest you play the endless version which does not time you, and begin with the easy version of the game. If you enjoy writing haiku, you can move on to the timed version of the game or get more constraints by increasing the difficulty. Copy your best and post them in the comments or on the Little Poets facebook group page.

Day 12 – Happy Belated Teacher Appreciation Week and A Diamante Poem

I just found out that  Teacher Appreciation Week ended yesterday. If you were to write a poem to a teacher that you appreciate, I am certain your teacher would appreciate that poem. So let’s give it a try. Today’s poem is called a diamante, or diamond, and was created by a teacher named Iris Tiedt. So you could say that today’s poem is of the teacher, by the teacher and for the teacher.  The diamante is a seven-line, diamond-shaped poem in this form:

Line 1: noun or subject, one word

Line 2: two adjectives describing the subject

Line 3: three words ending in -ing relating to the subject.

Line 4: two words describing the subject and two words describing its opposite

Line 5: three words ending in -ing relating to the opposite

Line 6 two words describing the opposite of the subject

Line 7 one word opposite of Line 1

.

Here is an example that I really like:

.

Rain by Maanasa

.

Raindrops

Wet, plump,

Slipping, Sliding, Splashing

= === Here comes the rainbow ====

Playing, Dancing, Singing

Warm, bright,

Sun rays

.

You might want your first word to be teacher and the last word to be student. Whatever you do, write something that would be meaningful for your teacher. Click on the picture below to write your own diamante poem. When you are done you can print it out to give to your teacher.  Don’t forget to share it with us either by commenting or by posting it on the Little Poets facebook group.

Day 11 – Hello! My Name Is A Limerick

I was out of fresh ideas today, so I asked my kids what kind of poems should we write today. My 9 year old daughter thought we should write Name Tag poems. She remembered some poems that I wrote a couple of years ago for my friends at a get together. Name tag poems are fun for a couple of reasons.

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First, who wouldn’t want a poem written about them? What a flattering thing to do. You could write a poem for your friend, or your dad, or your favorite guy at the the supermarket who has to wear a name tag anyways.

Secondly, it forces you to make a rhyme out of a word that may not rhyme very well. This can make for a funny poem. Luckily, I found an online rhyming dictionary that can help you.

A limerick is a five line poem to which I am particularly partial. In fact, some people call me The Limerick Lady.  Lines 1,2 and 5 have the same rhyme, and lines 3 and 4 have their own rhyme.  I have provided you with plenty of examples above. Before we start writing let’s see what rhymes we can find for the name.

Let’s write a poem for someone named Tammy. Some words that rhyme with Tammy are grammy, clammy, jammy, whammy. Those are the obvious ones. Then we could think further and see that Miami can rhyme with it as well. If you want to really get creative, look closer at the name and how it sounds. Tammy, tam me. What could rhyme with tam? Pam, slam, scram. And these words almost rhyme: can, van, stand, hand, ran, than, and van.

We want the poem to be funny, but not mean. It can tell a small story, or it can describe this person, or it could sound like something this person might say. Start the poem out with “Hello. My name is Tammy”

This one rhymes well, and was fairly obvious:

Hello. My name is Tammy

I’d shake  hands but mine are jammy.

I wanted to eat

A little something sweet

So I made sandwiches for me and my grammy.

This one stretches a little further and uses the word grammy in a different way.Sometimes the same word has two meanings.

Hello. My name is Tammy

I live in a city called Miami.

I’ll tell you a fact.

I love to sing and to act

and someday I shall win a Grammy.

This one is doesn’t rhyme perfectly but making one word rhyme with two words can be fun.

Hello. My name is Tammy

I’m nice, but my brother can’t stand me.

Well, I can be a creep

If I don’t get enough sleep

But most times I’m just fine and dandy.

I hope you will take a stab at this little limerick and post it either in the comments here or on our facebook group page (which you can join if you like!) Have fun!

Day 10 – A Pictionary Is Worth A Thousand Words

Today I stumbled upon oneword.com, a website that gives you a word and counts down one minute for you to write anything about it. It’s a very simple website with a very simple concept.

Simple. You’ll see one word at the top of the following screen.

You have sixty seconds to write about it.

Don’t think. Just write.

Today’s word was outgoing. I had sixty seconds to write anything about it off the top of my head. Here is what I came up with:

Outgoing.
I’m going out.
To meet people and go places.
Friendly smiles on their faces.
I’ll strike up some talk
Or just go for a walk
Or pick some flowers to put into vases.

The last line was actually finished after the minute was up, but I was able to do that rather quickly. I may have been more pleased with it if I had spent more time on the last line, but it was fun and it got the adrenaline going!  It reminded me of the fun game, Pictionary, where you get a word and have to draw a picture from a word provided in just one minute. So today we will do the same but by describing with words. If you are able to make it rhyme, even better!

Let’s play What Is It?

Read all of the instructions before starting.

First, open the online egg timer by clicking on the picture below and set it to 1:00 (one minute).

Then, open the game word generator by clicking on the picture below.

After selecting your word, start your timer and get writing. Write a poem that describes your word, but you may not use that word in your poem. After the timer is up, quickly finish the line you were working on. If you don’t like your poem, get another word and start again. Post your poem on the Little Poets facebook page or in the comments to see if we can guess it.

Here’s mine:

What is it?

It is sweet and sticky and it’s on a stick.

You will certainly want to have more than a lick.

Some have bubble gum in the middle.

Can you answer me this riddle?

Day 9 – Poem to an Inanimate Object

Today you shall write a love poem. What? You are just a kid? How could you be in love? Oh, come on. There must be something you love. For me, it’s coffee. I shall write a poem about coffee. Here goes:

I wake every day to you and your scent

Never too soon for my first sip

Surely you can make me content

To my step you give a light skip

Another teaspoon in water dissolves right away

Now I don’t want to miss a drip.

There could be no better start to my day.

 

Can I live without you, Nescafe?

Oh, the thought I dread.

For you help make everything okay

From morning til I go to bed

Especially when the skies are gray

Every cup has me so excited.

It’s true, I love coffee and I’m not afraid to tell the world about it. If you look closely, you can see something special about my poem. It does rhyme, but the first stanza has 7 lines and the second has six. I don’t normally write that way but today I just had to. Did you figure out why? I spelled out the thing I love in the first letter of each line. (Read down.)Why don’t you try the same? I can’t wait to see what it is that you love.

Day 8 – Telling Fibs. Fibonacci Poetry, that is…

The Fib

A fibonacci, or fib, is math meets prose. I am a lover or both mathematics and words, so this truly appeals to me. While the term now known in mathematics as Fibonacci was after an Italian mathemetician, it dates back to 200 BC with the ancient Indians in Sanskrit poetry.

Basically, what you do is add two numbers together, and continue adding the last two numbers of the sequence together to build the sequence. 1 , 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 and so on and so on . . . So with a fibonacci poem, these number are the numbers of syllables for each line.

Fibonacci sequences also occur in nature in the arrangement of leaves on a stem, pattern of florets in the head of a sunflower, the breeding of rabbits, the spirals of shells, and the curve of waves. The Fibonacci numbers are also found in the family tree of honeybees. Pretty cool stuff. But my brain has wondered far from textbooks over the years and I shall leave that for the scientists and mathematicians.

I will amuse you now with a few fibonacci poems, or fibs as they are known:

Noisy
kids.
Oh! My head!
What shall I do?
Send them to bed with no bread!

*****

Smoke
from cigarettes
makes me cough out loud.
My head is spinning with allergies.
How I wish there were a smoking ban enforced in Jordan.

*****

Telling stories
in few words
Reader’s Digest abridged style
Adding details here, taking out some there
Sounds like the formula for making a novel into a movie.

The true fibonacci poem should be as follows:

Line one has 1 syllable 
Line two has 1 syllable 
Line three has 2 syllables 
Line four has 3 syllables 
Line five has 5 syllables 
Line six has 8 syllables 
And you can add line seven (13 syllables) if you wish. 

Again, the pattern is 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 

My poems started with different numbers in lines one and line two but I added the syllables together in line one and two to come up with line three. Keep doing this until you have 5, 6 or 7 lines. Good luck!

Day 7 – The Clerihew

Today we will write a short, funny poem called a clarihew. It is named after the boy who invented it. Sixteen year old Edmund Clarihew Bentley and his friends used to fill their notebooks with this type of poem when they should have been studying science. He may have gotten in trouble for this while he was in school, but he got so good at writing these funny poems that he got them published when he grew up. They were very popular during his time. His son, Nicolas was a famous illustrator and he drew the pictures to go along with his father’s poems.

The first ever clerihew was written about Sir Humphry Davy, a chemist and once a poet. He discovered sodium as well as many other metals, so I imagine that he found this poem ironic:

Sir Humphry Davy

Was not fond of gravy.

He lived in the odium

Of having discovered sodium.

• The poem must be four lines long.
• The rhyme scheme must be a/a/b/b.
• The first line should consist of the name of a person.
• The poem should be biographical and humorous. Often times clerihews poke fun at famous people.

You could make fun of someone famous, a cartoon character, or a person in history. Whatever you do,  make it funny enough to make a panda laugh. That would be funny.

Extra credit if you can tell us what the heck odium means.

Day 6 – Mary Had A Little Something

Today’s prompt comes from giggle.poetry.com where I found this wonderfully fun exercise. No excuses, I expect some poems today! I am ready to rip out a few myself. This topic is just too good to pass up. I am posting the entire exercise from Giggle Poetry, but please check out their website. It’s full of fun poetry and more exercises that we may use this month.

How to Write a “Mary Had a Little Something” Poem

by Bruce Lansky

Over the years, poets have had a lot of fun with the “Mary Had a Little Lamb” nursery rhyme. This rhyme is so simple, and so well known, that you’ll love creating new versions. For example, one way to do this is to make Mary into quite a hungry girl. Here’s one of my rewrites based on this theme: Mary had a little jam, she spread it on a waffle. And if she hadn’t eaten ten she wouldn’t feel so awful. © 1996 by Bruce Lansky, reprinted from Mary Had a Little Jam with permission of Meadowbrook Press Try to think about what else Mary could have or could be doing. There are a number of possibilities: 1. She could have a little lamb. 2. She could eat a little lamb. 3. She could have a little something else that rhymes with lamb. 4. She could have something else altogether (like bubble gum). Pick any one of these themes as a point of departure, or write all four on your paper and start making lists of ideas: Mary Had a Little Lamb They went to the library The went to the amusement park etc. Mary Had (Ate) a Little Lamb What else did she eat? How did she feel afterwards? etc. Mary Had a Little Something Else Mary had a little ham Mary had a little Spam Mary had a little jam etc. Mary Had Something Else Altogether Mary had some bubble gum Mary had a water gun etc. No matter which themes you choose to pursue, you’ll want to make sure they follow the ABCB rhyme scheme and the rhythm scheme shown below: DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM (A) da DUM da DUM da DUM (B) da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM (C) da DUM da DUM da DUM. (B) I suggest that you read a few Mary poems to get yourself in the mood. You’ll find “Mary Had a Little Ham,” “Mary Had Some Bubble Gum,” and “Mary Had a Little Lamb” in A Bad Case of the Giggles and “Big, Fat Mary” in Miles of Smiles. No matter what you create, have fun with Mary and her lamb, her weird eating habits, her bubble gum, her water gun, or whatever.