Autumn Eyes
Submitted by: Barbara D. Martin (Original author unknown)
We wrote a four line "poem". The first line was My autumn eyes behold. Lines 2-4 follow a pattern of "color word", then "object" , and then "where". A sample line might be "tangerine pumpkins sitting on the porch". You start out by brainstorming more interesting words for the rainbow colors, such as scarlet, crimson, magenta.....instead of red. Then brainstorm events or objects that remind you of "fall", like apples, Halloween, football, scarecrows, leaves falling..... etc. Then model the putting it altogether in a poem.
My autumn eyes behold
Tangerine pumpkins sitting on the porch
Scarlet leaves falling off the trees
Multi-colored mums lining the roads
Next, and here comes the art part.....after all the poems are written......each child draws a large face wearing sunglasses. In the sunglasses they put the reflected images that they described in their poems. I'm not real artistic, but these came out great. The kids are so talented, putting such cute touches on their pictures like wild hair styles, earrings, funny smiles, beards..... you get the idea? These look great hanging.....I put both the pictures and the poems on fall colored backings. Have the kids do the poems on separate paper from the pictures....it saves on having to do the whole thing over if words are misspelled or whatever.
Comment by: Sharon Brandt
The art portion of this activity was begun by the art teacher having the class draw large faces of themselves with huge glasses. She used 12x18 drawing paper widthwise. They are simply adorable. After we work on the writing, they'll do the illustrations in their glasses and complete the coloring of their faces. I was amazed at how many of the pictures look just like the illustrator.