Before and After Halloween Acrostic

What You Need:

• Paper
• Pen or pencil
• Scrap Paper

What You Do:

1. Ask your child to write a list of Halloween words.  Additionally, you can suggest a few of these words: bats, candy, cats, frighten, ghosts, goblin, haunted, Jack-o’-lantern, monster, moon, skeleton or witch.
2. Which of these words does your child think would make a good acrostic?  Help your child brainstorm a list of words that have to do with the chosen word.  For the word ghost, your child might list ghoulish, spooky, hopeless, and floating.  Working on the list will help your child think spooky thoughts, and even practice vocabulary and synonyms.
3. Can your child choose words from this second list to begin the lines in the acrostic poem?  If none of them will work, brainstorm words that begin with the necessary letters.
4. It’s time to write the acrostic. Don’t be surprised if it takes several tries to get each line written.
5. Once the acrostic poem is finished, it’s time for the real challenge. Have your child write a second poem ending with the letters in the chose word.  For the word Ghost, this means that the first line ends in G, the second in H, the third in O, the fourth in S and the last in T.
6. Again, before your child tries to write this second poem, brainstorm words that end with each letter. This can be hard and a Scrabble Word Finder (http://www.wordfind.com/ends-with/) can help with this step. It lists words by the last letter.
7. Once your child has developed a list, it’s time to write the second poem. Again, it may take several tries to come up with a good line for each letter.  
8. When your child is done, have your child write the paired poems out to share it with her family.