by Felicia Arnold

Created on: August 05, 2011   Last Updated: October 11, 2011

Entertain your children with an amusing poem, and they will be hooked forever.  When introducing a poem to your children, be aware of the ability of your audience to understand what you are reciting.  To read some of Walt Whitman's poems, or the writings of Carl Sandburg might be to ambitious for four and five year olds.  Wait until they are developmentally ready to understand their beautiful verses and then proceed.

Think of your groups as pre-school, primary and then elementary students. Keeping the poems at their level of understanding will ensure a fine lesson.

Pre School 

During these grades, children enjoy picture books with short rhyming verse.  Many poems are acted out with hand movements; such as "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" or "Five Little Monkeys" The children love the repetition and the body movements which correspond. 

Nursery rhymes are popular because they are short, funny, and easy to remember, especially when you can sing them. "Hot Cross Buns", and "Hey Diddle, Diddle" are great fun for children to recite and act out.

Primary 

Children in the second to fourth grades enjoy a sharper sense of humor in their poetry.  The poems by Jack Prelutsky and Shel Silverstein are perfect examples of poems with a sharper point of view.  In "Where The Sidewalk Ends" poems such as "Captain Hook," "For Sale" or "Lazy Jane" provide such material.  "Captain Hook" addresses picking your nose, "For Sale" is about brothers and sisters not getting along, and Jane is so lazy that the poem is written in one vertical line with one word per line.

"It's Raining Pigs and Noodles", by Jack Prelutsky contains wonderfully visual poems with rhythmic and rhyming words.  Children love to perform the poem, "Hiccup!" where they have to insert a hiccup sound when they recite the lines.  "Percy's Perfect Pies" is chock full of fantastic pies, such as; pumpkin panda coriander...cassowary curdled cream...salsa salmon salamander...skunk asparagus supreme. 

Elementary 

As the children become more sophisticated and begin developing their own poetic style, introducing Acrostic poems, Diamonte poems, and Haiku poetry would be just perfect.  They can now channel their interest in poetry with cross curricular subjects and begin creating their own and sharing them with others.  Kalli Dakos has created poems with various interests.  "It's Inside my Sister's Lunch" is written in dialog between the teacher and the students. Another popular poem is "There's a Cobra in the Bathroom". 

Remember to know your audience, and provide appropriate poetry for their level of understanding.  Keep it brief and funny at first.  And as time goes by, they will be asking  for the works of Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg. And to think it all began with an itsy-bitsy spider.

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