Poetry Pebbles

Students will use small rocks, stones and pebbles to create words with which to write poetry.

By Andrea Mulder-Slater

What You Need:

• Small rocks or pebbles.
• Small paint bushes.
• Water and water containers.
• Magic markers.
• Paint (acrylic is best — tempera is okay).
• A covered work area.
• A shoebox, yogurt or empty “Jiffy Pop” popcorn container.
• Hairspray or a spray varnish (optional).

What You Do:

• Make sure your pebbles are clean.
• Paint words onto your pebbles. You could also use markers instead of paint.
• Choose a number of words — people, places, things, action words etc. Some good ones are:

1. he
2. she
3. to
4. love
5. dog
6. went
7. walk
8. you
9. happy
10. in
11. to
12. a
13. my
14. your
15. orange
16. red
17. blue
18. purple
19. green
20. swim
21. bike

• Use your imagination and make sure you draw some punctuation marks on some pebbles as well (comma, exclamation point, period, question mark etc.)
• Once the pebbles are painted, let them dry and seal them with hairspray or spray varnish (optional).
• Put all the pebbles into a show box or Jiffy Pop container. You can decorate your container with paint or markers as well.
• Play a game of poetry pebbles. Each player chooses a number of pebbles from the box and tries to come up with a poem or story.
• Makes for a great way to begin a short story for those times when you have writers block!