Making a Poetry Paper Chain

I love making paper chains and thought it would be fun to do one with a poem on.

This poem will be all about ADVERBS. Adverbs answer questions like, how, when, where, etc. Adverbs often end in ‘ly’, but not always. We are going to use adverbs to describe how a frog is croaking. 

You will write the poem first and then you will make a paper chain frog to write your poem on!

The first line of the poem is ‘The frog is croaking’ and so the first frog in the paper chain will have the words ‘The frog is croaking’ on it.

The last line of the poem is ‘on his log’, which will be written the last frog.

You will need to choose six adverbs to poetically describe how the frog is croaking, to write in on the frogs between the first frog and the last frog.

Maybe you want to describe how the frog is feeling – you might want to say he is croaking sadly, happily, or grumpily. You could draw your frogs expression to match how it is feeling!

Or perhaps you want to choose some rhyming words.  You would need three pairs of rhyming words. ‘Sadly’ rhymes with ‘badly’ and ‘madly’ . ‘Grumpily’ rhymes with jumpily. Jumpily isn’t a real word, but in a poem, you can use words that aren’t real, as long as people can understand what you mean and they fit!

You could use your six words to describe a real frog. It’s up to you.

Here is my adverb frog poem:

The frog is croaking:

grumpily,

jumpily,

chirpily,

burpily,

happily,

nappily,

on his log.

Here is how to make the frog chain – read all the instructions before starting:

Start with one piece of A4 paper.

Fold it in half along the long side:

Cut along your fold so you have two identical strips:

Then stick the strips together with sticky tape so you have one long strip – make sure you tape both sides. (It’s best to do all this with clean hands, and no crumbs of chocolate on your top which drop off as you lean over your paper… not that this happened to me. Oh, no.)

It should look like this:

Then fold each side into the middle.

Until it looks like this:

Then fold each side into the middle again. Make sure all these creases are pressed down nicely.

You now have all the paper folded into the right number of pieces, but they need to be folded in the right way. Open the paper up:

And starting from one end fold the paper into a zigzag:

Some of your creases will be the wrong way round. Just change the way they go as you fold.

You should end up with a piece of paper that looks like this:

Turn your folded paper round the correct way – with an open flap to the left. Now you can draw your frog! Make sure the frogs cheeks and legs go off of the side of the paper. When you cut your frog out, you must make sure you do not cut round the cheeks the whole way or the legs the whole way, because this is where the frog is attached to its neighbour in the chain:

This is where you must not cut:

Cut your frog out!

And unfurl him – can you see why you must not cut the whole way round his cheeks and legs?

How exciting! Now you can write your poem on him. Because he has two sides, you could write two poems!

Look at your poem and decide if you are happy with it. Do you still like your words? Do you want to edit it? When you are ready, write the poem on your frog, in pencil.

Remember, on the first frog you write ‘The frog is croaking’ and on the last frog, ‘on his log’.

You can of course change the words in any way you like! But check they fit first and make sense. Get someone else to read it. Then go over your pencilled poem in thin felt tip or another type of permanent pen.

Then you can use a pencil to put the expressions on your frogs’ faces! When you are happy, go over these in ink, too. Then you can colour in your frogs with coloured pencils – remember, not all frogs are green! They come in ALL colours!

I hope you enjoy this adverb poem frog chain challenge! Send me pictures if you make one!

*Update* Look! The Red Bubble from Farfield Primary and Nursery School, Bradford, have made some smashing poetry paper chains! Well, done, Red Bubble!