Poetry Night 2015

Poetry Night is one of the biggest nights for first graders at Eli's school.  For weeks, the first graders have been learning about poems and writing their own poems.  The culmination of this unit is Poetry Night...a night where all the first grade families come together and listen to poetry readings while sipping on coffee (or chocolate milk) and eating some desserts in a candlelit room.  The children are even taught to applaud with snaps!  Not only do the first graders recite poems, but parents and family members do as well.

When Elina went through First Grade, we all went on stage and performed Laurie Berkner's "Song in My Tummy."  (Songs are allowed at Poetry Night because songs are a type of poetry, too.)  For weeks, I kept thinking, "NOW what are we supposed to perform?"  Luckily, I found another Laurie Berkner song just for the occasion--"Blow a Kiss."  I thought it was appropriate since the end of the year is upon us and we all hate saying goodbye to First Grade at Discovery School.  We practiced it the whole week up until Poetry Night...we all had our verses to sing, Evie had hers memorized, Elina wrote an extra verse about Discovery School, B was playing guitar, even Eulee knew when to do the "blow a kiss" motion during the song.  It turned out pretty cute...even though Eulee didn't really do the motions we had practiced.  We even managed to make a few people cry!  (In the video, the focus goes in and out just because it was so dark in the room, so hopefully you can see everything ok.)
All of Eli's poems were really cute.  He did a wonderful job!  I was especially impressed with his poem about his good friend, K.

B and Eli went up to read a poem together, too.  It was all so memorable!

We love love love Poetry Night!

(We didn't get lots of great pictures that night though...it's difficult because it's so dark in there and Eulee was a handful that night.  Plus, Elina was having some tummy troubles, so she wasn't in a picture-taking mood either.  Too bad!)