Hailstones and Halibut Bones: Adventures in Color

Here is a book that I've come to love. It is new to me, but it was published in the 60s, so many of you have probably seen it. Okay, on first looks, I definitely judged this book by it's cover. I thought it looked a wee bit hokey. I was totally wrong! This is a very neat poetry book. Each poem is based on a particular color and lists words, nouns feelings and associations that go with that color, all done with beautiful poetry. My kids enjoyed this book very much and loved guessing what color we would do next. I would HIGHLY recommend it for poetry grades 3-6!

The new state assessment in Texas (STAAR) now has poetry listed as an objective that could be tested. So here is a long list of concepts we worked on/activities you could do with this amazing book!

- Predicting: Each poem lists many things that are a color. So, for example, to hook them into the lesson, you could share with them the color of the poem before you read and have them predict what words or items of that color would show up in the poem and see who gets the most correct.

-Imagery! The "What is Red?" poem has some great images!

-Internal Rhyme--"What is Grey?" poem contains internal rhyme! (This is eligible to be tested as well.)

-Figurative Language runs throughout.

-Sensory Details and onomatopoeia examples come up frequently.

-"Sketching through the text" as they visualize the poem could be used with any color.

- After you have read some of the poems, you could have them write their own poem with a color you haven't read about!

These are just a few ideas you could incorporate into a poetry unit using this book! I hope you enjoy!