Preschool Poets

One of our favorite activities at Woodland Park involves children telling stories that I transcribe by hand, then read aloud at circle time. If you’re interested in the details of how the process works, click here.

Several people have suggested that I tape record these stories, if only to save myself the hand cramps. Doing the mental experiment of thinking this one through leads me to the conclusion that this would involve hours of extra work on my part. I’m not a lazy man, but just the thought of sitting at my keyboard, doing the secretarial work of getting all those words (and believe me, there would be a lot more words if they didn’t have to pause occasionally) on “paper,” leads me to conclude that those recordings would just collect dust somewhere, making me feel guilty.

Besides, this is about “writing” for an audience, not journaling, free association, or stream-of-conscious rambling. By its very nature, writing is a slower more thoughtful process than simply speaking. I like that the children are compelled to slow down.

Kids often start to race ahead of my ability to write, but when they realize I’m trailing them, they stop while I catch up. I’ve usually heard much of what they’ve said and could probably recreate it if necessary, but when I look up to let them know I’m ready to start writing again, rarely do they use the same words as they did the first time. An editing process takes place during that short interim. Typically, the sentence after a forced pause is more concise, relates more directly to the arc of the story, or reflects a change of mind. When a child is in a particular hurry, I take advantage of pauses to re-read what they’ve dictated up to that point, giving them a clearer picture of where they’ve been in the hopes of helping them figure out where they want to go next.

These pauses create a rhythm to our storytelling process, one that reflects the realities of writing. The more experienced of our storytellers are so accustomed to the pauses that they to do it on their own, speaking a sentence, waiting for me to catch up, then speaking the next sentence. At its most fundamental level, that’s what writing is. We start with words, which we use to create sentences, which we then build one upon another into paragraphs and beyond. At least, this is the process of writing prose.

The process of writing poetry obviously shares a great deal with prose, but tends to be much more focused on rhythm and how the words actually appear on paper. Our preschool writing rhythm is an irregular beat to be sure, forced upon us not only by the limitation of my ability to keep up, but also the reality of a room full of distractions. It’s something that doesn’t show up when I present their work here, so I sometimes like to rearrange their stories as poems as a way to convey this sense of rhythm.

Once there were a bear
And it was cooking food.
And then it bites himself,
But then he didn’t fall down.
He bited two times.
He found a worm to eat.
–Jack

It’s about a Angry Princess.
And the Angry Princess went along
and it said, “Goo, goo, gaa, gaa.”
And the Angry Dragon came along.
It was a scary pet.
The silly people walked on her head.
–Katherine

A piglet.
A girl came in and get her
and flew away.
Then a lady bug come.
Then a Thomas came.
Then a elephant came and get water on him.
With the trunk.
Then a sheep comed.
Then a vitamin came.
And then a doggy came.
–Charlie B.

There once was a sad kitty cat.
And then the kitty cat bumped
into a wall
and got better.
Then she bumped
into two more walls
and she got hurt again.
Then she walked around and bumped
into a loose head.
And then the cat jumped over the cat.
The cat jumped over the cat.
And the cat wobbled
to the cat.
Then she wobbled
to another cat.
Then she danced
around and wobbled
into another cat.
Then she bumped
into a baby dog.
–Josephine

One time a monster truck was in a race.
Then the monster truck crashed
into a monster truck
and then a monster truck came
and drived a monster truck.
Then another monster truck came
and run into
another monster truck.
And then the jets came and crashed into them.
And then one of the firemen came.
And then a tank shot up the fireman’s truck.
And then three more jets
crashed
into all the other jets.
–Finn V.

A dark night.
And then a ghost comed.
And then a broke the handle.
And then a dragon comed
and farted.
And then a bad skeleton comed.
–Lachlan

If you’re interested in reading more of the children’s stories, here are the links in order of appearance:

And Now The Children Tell Their Stories

And Now The Children Tell Their Stories 2

There Was A Bad Dream In My Bed 

Where The Wild Things Are

Stories From The Edge

Short, Smart, Sweet And Silly

A Muddy Puddle Of Morality

Wearing His Cape Every Day

One Thing At A Time

And Now For Something Completely Silly

I'm Thinking Something To Ella

Then A Monster Truck Came

Inspirations And Influences

Squirrel Stories (So Far)