Friday, April 15, 2011

Poetry Month: Celebrating Math in Poetry

Over at Brimful Curiosities, they are celebrating National Poetry Month. Each week, they are doing a blog link-up where children post illustrations of poems that they've read. I thought it would be fun to illustrate some math poems.

I recently purchased Marvelous Math: A Book of Poems. My 8yo chose to illustrate the title poem, "Marvelous Math." The first stanza:

"How fast does a New York taxi go?
What size is grandpa's attic?
How old is the oldest dinosaur?
The answer's in Mathematics!"

Looking for more ideas? Read the math poems that another homeschooling family wrote. You can also look through previous math poetry blog posts for additional ideas. Some of the Shel Silverstein poems would be particularly fun to illustrate.

If you'd like to read more on the topic, you can find several sections from the book Math Poetry: Linking Math and Language in a Fresh Way by Betsy Franco here. And here are Mr. R's Math Poems.  Or maybe you want to illustrate a math poem of the week or another poem from this massive list.

If you post your child's math poetry illustration in your blog, please comment with a link. I'd love to visit! Also link-up at Little Sprout Books (poetry books), Random Noodling (poetry Friday), Brimful Curiosities (poetry illustrations), and Learning All the Time (favorite resources.)


And here are some kids' poetry games and activities to try on-line!