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April is coming to an end soon, and lest we forget, it’s time to celebrate National Poetry Month before its over! Any time of year is a perfect time to explore poetry with kids. It’s a super fun and educational activity for kids that gets them interested in writing!
Not sure where to begin? Poetry doesn’t have to be boring to teach kids essential writing and life skills. Check out these 3 terrific poetry activities for kids to celebrate this exciting art form with your kids1
What are the Benefits of Poetry Writing for Kids?
When reading poems, children learn about the varying sounds their voice can make with pitch, volume, and inflection. It’s just one way they prepare for reading fluency, but an incredibly important one. Poetry teaches young readers how people really speak, which helps them make sense of what they see in print. Furthermore, rhyming patterns help children identify sounds in words and find out about the relationship between them.
Like any other form of reading, poetry expands kids’ vocabulary. Poetry is different in that it usually follows a rhythm. When children read words that rhyme, they start to learn new words Even though it might not seem like it, poems that rhyme are the results of some very restrictive writing methods the poet must follow. If the poet wants every other line to rhyme, it limits the words they can use and forces them to make creative, unusual choices. To the poet, this is about combining and pairing new words. To the reader, this is about expanding their vocabulary.
Rhyming Dominoes
This rhyming activity from No Time for Flashcards is so versatile. It’s a great activity for kids who are confusing rhyming with families of words. It’s true that rhyming has little to do with spelling, it’s all about the sound, not the spelling. This game reminds kids of that. When kids can’t read just yet, you can use a photo instead of text on your homemade rhyming dominoes.
Pop Sonnets
Older kids will have a blast turning their favorite songs on the radio into sonnets, like the creations on this popular blog. You can also read them together as a fun introduction to sonnet structure and other poetry conventions.
Musical Poetry Activities for Kids
Use music as further inspiration for poetry with this fun printable activityfrom Teachwriting.org. In this activity, students try to pinpoint the tone of a piece of music and use that tone to brainstorm a sequence of words that reflect their reactions to it. After this, they will write their own original poems, being careful to make conscious decisions and purposefully put words in the poem.
Teaching students the creative writing process has them purposefully set the tone of the piece to illustrate a theme. It also lets them explore other forms of writing in general and poetry in particular. Giving them a simple explanation, such as connecting the tone to the concept of music, to understand how the sound of the word can capture the same tone as the music.
To learn more about writing activities for kids, and all sorts of ways to teach your child more every day, check out these related Wondrfly blogs.
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