I have written a few times about poetry with children. I really enjoy poetry and I think it’s a great way to experiment with words and language. We have lots of poetry books around, and I often find D reading some them or find them dotted around the house where he has left them.
Our weekly Poetry tea time has lapsed a bit in recent months, but when we have a new rhythm in place in September I want to reintroduce it. I think it might become something we do at bedtime as a means to calming down as we share a poem each from our daily anthologies.
I wanted to share some of the poetry books and writers that we have been enjoying in recent months.
Fun Poems
First up has to be I am a Jigsaw by Roger Stevens. I really like this book as it shows how poems can be fun in terms of acrostics and riddles. There’s also plenty of encouragement to get children thinking about having a go themselves with different poetry forms. It’s great for demonstrating how we use languages and how we can use it to look for clues as to the meaning of phrases.
I Bet I Can Make You Laugh by Joshua Seigal has been another hit here, and is one that I often find D reading through. There’s a wide range of contributors to this anthology, as well as some poems by Joshua Seigal himself who is a fabulous writer (and is well worth a follow on twitter if you don’t already). I have his first book, I Don’t Like Poetry, on our wish list as I suspect D will enjoy it enormously.
Finally, Bright Bursts of Colour by Matt Goodfellow is a lot of fun to explore with children. There’s a lot fun in this book, but it also includes poems on more sensitive themes and it can be a good route in to exploring often tricky things with children. There’s a poem about spending time at mums house and at dad’s house and it encouraged some interesting conversations between my older two about what this might look and feel like for their peers who might be experiencing the same thing. A really great collection of poems in this book.
Year Long Anthologies
I’ve written before about my love for I Am The Seed That Grew The Tree and I can’t wait for the follow up, Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright which will be published in a month or two.
We also have the Poems for every day of the Year and Every Night of the Year books and I think we will look at these together at bedtime, taking it in turns to read one aloud from the book. I also quite like the look of the Shakespeare book too and I may well invest in that for myself at some stage.
Poetry Books to Fall in Love WIth
And finally, for slightly older children (or even for adults) then I really can recommend Poems from a Green & Blue Planet. This is a beautiful book and there are some wonderful works included in the book that demonstrate the beauty and fragility of our wonderful planet. You can’t help but fall in love with it. Tell me the Truth About Life is a beautiful collection of poems which marked National Poetry week (last year I think) and I look forward to this year’s anthology.
You can read some other poetry-related posts at the links below:
