Here’s to the Animals, Freebie

Last September I blogged about this fabulous book And Here’s to You!  I’ve since read it to my class two more times.

I absolutely LOVE this book. I wish I had written this book!  It’s so incredibly delightful and heart-warming. If you don’t have it yet … go buy it!

We spent some time reading and re-reading it so that we could write some poems using the poetry frame below.

After we read And Here’s to You! we read a sweet book about crows so that we had some shared language and ideas about these quirky birds. We wrote a crow poem together using our poetry frame (see below), then the kids wrote one on their own.

Actually, they were given the choice to either write on their own OR to buddy up with a friend and write two more poems about animals other than crows.

Dogs was the favourite topic, but happily there was also a gorilla, cheetah, giraffe and snake poem.

Here they are:

Here’s to the gorillas!
The banana people.
Gorillas!
The hitting the tummy ones.
The eating ones.
The yelling ones.
The grabbing ones.
Oh, I love the gorillas!

Here’s to the snakes!
The camouflage people.
Snakes!
The predator ones.
The very very slick ones.
The very slithery ones.
The very long tongue ones.
Oh I love the snakes!

Here’s to the dogs!
The howling people.
Dogs!
The really really sleeping ones.
The very very loud ones.
The scratching ones.
The fluffy ones.
Oh, I love the dogs!

Here’s to the deer!
The quiet people.
Deer!
The very very kicky ones.
The very delicate ones.
The really soft ones.
The really really crazy ones.
Oh, I love the deer!

As you can see, we also took some time painting a pretty frame for the poems.

If you decide to try this I think you’ll be happily surprised at how easy this is for Grade 1s AND how much fun they’ll find it.

DOWNLOAD: Poetry Templates

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