Cinquain http://www.writinghood.com/tags/Cinquain New posts about Cinquain Helping a Child Write a Mother's Day Poem http://www.writinghood.com/Style/How-To/Helping-a-Child-Write-a-Mothers-Day-Poem.115977 This guide covers how to help a child write a simple personalized Mother's Day Poem based on a few descriptive words.

What we're going to cover is how to write a short and simple poem format called a Cinquain.

While Cinquains come in various formats, we will do a play on a "True Ciquain" with a minor tweak.

The guidelines to the actual format would look something like this. . .

"True Cinquain"

  • Line 1: 1 word title (noun) 2 syllables
  • Line 2: 2 descriptive words (adjectives) 4 syllables
  • Line 3: 3 words that express action 6 syllables
  • Line 4: 4 words that express feeling 8 syllables
  • Line 5: 1 word (synonyms or reference to title in line 1) 2 syllables

To be easy and flexible in helping most age groups write this, make it simple and forget the syllable counting; as a younger age group may not yet grasp the concept of separating the number of syllables in a word. Of course if you wish to follow the syllables, go for it!

So an example of the rule set (without following syllables) could be. . .

Mom
Kind, Sweet
Loving, Caring, Joyful
Happy, Warm, Comfortable, Safe
Love

While being descriptive with some word choices may be challenging for a child, you can help them by making Line 1: "Mom" by default and asking simple questions for Lines 2-5. Example: Line 4: How does Mom make you feel?. . .Happy? Comfortable? etc.

Short and sweet. The joys of poetry is that in all reality, anything goes providing it makes sense to your target audience.

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