April Rain Showers bring a host of golden daffodils

I am having so much fun exploring poetry with the kindergarten students.  We have been engaging in close reading of poems and noticing how poets use their five senses when they write.  I am really enjoying reading and sharing poetry with the students, it does tell me that I would like to include more shared reading in the poetry centers that I have explored this year with the first through third graders. I will be reflecting on these poetry centers more later. Back to April Rain Showers bringing a host of golden daffodils!

Last week, the kindergarten students and I read and explored April Rain Showers by Langston Hughes. The students created art that demonstrated one of the three senses captured in the poem, some also wrote new poems inspired by April Rain Shower.

Today April showers brought May flowers, the beautiful April Rain Shower clouds are now floating above the yellow daffodils. (And yes, if it is Tuesday, it must be raining.)  I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud fit so nicely with our April Rain Shower  exploration that I couldn't resist introducing it to the kindergarten students.  We focused on the first stanza for our close reading, but listened to the first two stanzas in the video on the Poetry Foundation website. The poem is superbly read by Dave Matthews.

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

So, now, as with Wordsworth, our clouds (not lonely at all) are floating over the daffodils that are beneath the tree fluttering and dancing in the breeze.