With all of the hustle and bustle of todays society sometimes we tend to lose sight of what is important. With the distraction of all the technology that is available at our fingertips, we don’t look straight ahead or around us anymore. We try to do too many things at once that we forget to just be in the moment. It is such an important skill to teach our students from a young age to enjoy those little moments and to learn how to be present in the moment.
One thing that I have found that helps to teach students this skill is observational poetry. Observational poetry is looking at anything and everything around you and making poems out of your observations. One idea to do is to take your students on a nature walk. Nature will give your students so many options to choose from and to observe from. Have your students pick an object, then have them write all of their observations, what they see, smell, hear, feel, etc. Then have the students draw their objects. This will allow them to maybe see something in it that they didn’t before and have them write down some more observations from their drawings. Then let the magic come to life and have the students write their poems, using those observations. I saw and evergreen tree and below is my example of my observations, drawing, and poem:
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