Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words. ~ Edgar Allen Poe
Poetry has always resonated with me. When I was little I used to have this little book of poems that was my grandmothers. I would spend many hours perusing through the little book trying to commit the lovely prose to memory. I was always enthralled at the way the authors could capture so many emotions through the use of a perfect word.
I want my children to have the same fascination and love of poetry. I think children are naturally drawn to poems. They can be fun and whimsical while telling a story.
Each week in our schooling I introduce a new poem. We use this poem throughout the whole week to work on several writing and language concepts. I don’t require our children to memorize the poems because we already have a heavy load of memory work, but by the end of the week they usually know most of it.
After first introducing the poem and discussing literal and implied meanings we almost always illustrate it. Everyone keeps a poetry journal that we use for all our poems, I have them either draw or paste their pictures in that.
I love that although my kindergartner can’t read and even wrote the title of the poem completely backward, after a quick lesson she could determine where the stanzas were.
We find the Rhyming words, then think of some of our own.
We also talk about the pattern of the poem. Is it an ABAB, ABCB, or an ABBA poem. This usually comes up while we talk about the words that rhyme. I have only introduced a few poems at this point in our schooling that have not rhymed, just to illustrate that there are many genres of poetry.
I always try to have as many hands on activities as I can during our school day to get everyone involved. This is one of those activities, I wrote the poem on sentence strips and cut it up. They had to put the poem back in order. I have them try to do this without looking at the poem, then when they think they have it right they check it.
A few other activities we have worked on that I will share more on later are: Writing our own poems about the subject, acting out the poem, finding the metaphors, similes and personification. Sometimes I will rewrite the poem with incorrect grammar and have them correct it.
We may not get to all of these activities every week, because I like to switch things up but we hit most of them regularly.
There are so many wonderful Poetry resources out there and I have compiled several on my poetry Pinterest board that I use regularly.
