The K5 - elementary education for parents

I like to encourage children to write poetry about their dreams and aspirations. A poetry activity that I do in my class near the end of the year is about hopes and dreams for the coming new year.  This is how I structure it:

First we do a brainstorm of all of the positive feeling words we can think. Excited, happy, overjoyed, elated, ecstatic, and the list goes on.

Each student writes ten sentences about what they hope and dream for in the upcoming year, skipping lines.

Then they chose a word from our brainstorm that they feel is associated to one of their hopes and dreams. They write that word write above it.

Ecstatic

I want to run through knee-deep snow with my friends.

Joyful

I hope I grow an inch and a half.

And the poem goes on.  When they are finished, it can be posted on the wall, or you can both write a poem, seal them in an envelope and look at them later on in the year to see if any of those hopes and dreams have been achieved.  It’s like a time capsule of winter’s hopes and dreams.