Hey, Doodlebug! A Poetry Challenge

Today from the ridge, I am sharing a little poetry ditty on the doodlebug! Thanks for visiting today, and be sure to squiggle on over to Carol's space Beyond Literacy Link where she is hosting our round-up this week.

This week, I was invited to participate in a Poetry Challenge by the fourth grade writers in Mrs. Dungan's class. I was thrilled to accept the invitation to write! My task was to write a poem around a student chosen topic. I would be submitting my poem to the class, along with the student poets in the room who had chosen to accept the challenge. On Friday the poems would be read aloud and the poet with the most votes by the audience would be named the Poetry Challenge Champ of the week. I knew immediately, I was going to have some tough competition!  The topic that was chosen for the week was "animals." I definitely wanted to write a poem that was playful and funny. I thought about all the different animals I could write about. It was really hard to choose! I finally decided on an almost invisible  creature that has fascinated me ever since I was a little girl, the antlion or better known as, the doodlebug.   

Antlion (Doddlebug) pits Photo taken by Kiesha Shepard

Antlion or Doodlebug in the larva stage

Antlion in the adult stage

I would like to thank Mrs. Dungan's fourth grade class for their kind invitation to write for their poetry challenge of the week! For more poetry challenge submissions from Mrs. Dungan's amazing poets click HERE.

Invitation to Write:

Writers take on poetry challenges all the time. It is a great way to explore and experiment with language, form, and a variety of literary devices. Best of all, it's really fun! Taking on a challenge can really stretch your thinking and it can motivate you to get your creative juices flowing. Whenever you are faced with a poetry challenge, it can also be helpful to immerse yourself in mentor texts that you might lean on for guidance or inspiration. Since my poetry challenge topic was animals, I found this book of pocket poems about birds particularly helpful. I found a few poems that were very similar to the form that I was wanting to try out for my challenge. Through careful study of these mentor poems and by pushing myself to write in a craft I had never tried before, I was amazed at what I could create on the page. I encourage you, my friends, to consider accepting a poetry challenge or try assigning yourself a writing challenge. It's a great way to learn and grow as a writer.    

On Wings of Song-Poems About Birds selected and edited by J.D. McClatchy

Here is one of the poems that I referred to as a mentor for my poem Hey, Doodlebug!

The Vulture
The Vulture eats between his meals,
And that's the reason why
He very, very rarely feels
As well as you and I.

His eye is dull, his head is bald,
His neck is growing thinner.
Oh! what a lesson for us all
To only eat at dinner!

​Hilaire Belloc