For National Poetry Month 2021, I’m posting an equation poem each day. Maybe with an image, maybe without. I needed something very accessible and doable this year! Maybe you feel the same way? I’d love for you to join me, and here are several options for sharing your own or your students’ equation poems:
- in the comments below
- on social media with #EquationPoem–and be sure to tag me, please! (@LauraPSalas on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook)
- on the Padlet on my bookpage here
Here’s today’s equation poem. I love how pine cones are full of seeds that grow up to be pine trees that make pine cones. I feel like this equation poem should’ve included a corollary equation (is that what they’re called?): forest / pine cone = treasure chest. Not sure I came up with exactly the right words here, but I’m restricting myself to images I’ve taken that are still on my phone, and as the month gets busier and busier, my equation poems are getting squeezed into tinier bits of time! Glad April is almost over or I might just be posting a blue rectangle with a couple haphazard words in it!
And if you love equation poems, check out my Snowman-Cold=Puddle: Spring Equations, published by Charlesbridge and with gorgeous art by Micha Archer.
Happy poeming!
P.S. Click here if you want to see all of this month’s equation poems!
P.P.S. If you like these, you might also love This Plus That, by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Jen Corace, and Mathematickles, by Betsy Franco and Steve Salerno.
4 Responses
Have you ever seen the giant pinecones in Pinehurst NC area? They are all over the sides of the roads, etc. When we were young marrieds we went for a vacation there and golfed. (Not the fancy place.) So we gathered some to take home and I gave one to each student for a decorating project and had some on display in my house for a long while. I don’t think any remain, but I found such a giant one that I marveled at. I also have stones, shells and geodes about. Just little bits but I love them. Stones from Maine are wonderful. You can’t really remove them from beaches (preventing the garden business from mass collection, but one or two would not be horrible given the millions around I tell myself.….)
Maine treasure + sea stones = careful rock collecting
pancake style + vastness = Maine’s sea stones
shoreline + treasure = careful rock collecting
I am working on getting it “right” but this is fun. I have a terrific book of photos of Maine rocks with explanation.
Last bit: my college professor was a rock collector so she had traveled a lot. She gathered stones (small to medium) and turned them into mosaics. She had one above her desk. I always marveled and she could tell you where each section was found. I loved it and wished I had had the foresight to collect as we traveled the country as a child. Sadly I never photographed it and wish I had. It must have weighted a ton though, I have no idea how they got it to hang!!!!
These are wonderful, Janet! I especially love the pancake style one. I bring a few rocks home from everywhere we go, but I have no way to remember where they came from. That makes me sad…I haven’t ever seen the giant pine cones you’re talking about. I haven’t ever been to Pinehurst, NC, though I’ve seen some pretty big pine cones as we backpacked on the Appalachian Trail and such when I was a kid. From images online, I can’t tell how big the pine cones are (nothing next to them for perspective!). But any pine cone larger than my hand always brings me joy!
Janet, I love your poems. My husband Craig and I visited Maine before we had children and loved it. When the kids were older instead of going to Cape Cod we went to Acadia National park. We loved hiking and watching the waves crash over the rocks. Laura’s poem and your poems inspired my poems below.
Laura, I LOVE pinecones and I LOVE your equation poem! When I hike I’m always stop to pick up pine cones, leaves, or rocks. I also stop to take photos of ferns, flowers, pine cones, views, trees…I like to bring a notebook for writing poetry on hikes or at the ocean or.… Both Janet and you inspired me, today.
pine cones + leaves + rocks + photos + poems = treasures
ocean x (waves + shells + breeze) = poetry (Not sure if the multiplication works here.)
I’m going to keep writing equation poems in my notebook. Thank you so much for your NPM of equation poems! Yay, Laura!