"The poet's aim is to blend in one the delightful and the useful" - Horace. Parents will want to give their child a positive experience. Short poems that get to the heart quickly, and rhyming poems that maintain interest, are ideal. Find a poem on a topic that is meaningful to both you and your child which will make reading poetry together special.
L B Hopkins, a noted poet in his own right with 113 titles to his credit, has compiled poetry collections for children based on topics including animals, holidays, the seasons, and difficult emotions. He says of poetry that
"...nothing – no thing – can ring and rage through hearts
and minds as does this genre of literature”.
A good poem will both gratify and teach. It will bring pleasure, as well as instruction, to its reader. Memorizing and reciting poetry can be an ideal activity for you and your child. Many of the poems in the following list are appropriate for children. These are poems that rhyme, are short, and have instructional value. Enjoy!
THE CROCODILE by Lewis Carroll
How doth the little crocodile
improve his shining tail
And pour the waters of the Nile
on every shining scale
How cheerfully he seems to grin
how neatly spreads his claws
And welcome little fishes
with gently smiling jaws
The Swing by Robert Louis Stevenson
How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!
Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
River and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside--
Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown--
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!
Growing by Mary Ann Hoberman
The grown-ups say I’m growing tall
And that my clothes are growing small.
Can clothes grow small?
I always think
That things grow big
Or else they shrink.
But did they shrink
Or did I grow
Or did we both change?
I don’t know
A Silly Poem by Spike Milligan
Said Hamlet to Ophelia,
I'll draw a sketch of thee,
What kind of pencil shall I use?
2B or not 2B?
Eat Your Words by Benjamin Zephaniah
I am a veggie table
A table made of veg,
There’s so much fruit upon me
All living on the edge,
Life is hard
But so are plates
And tea can be quite hot,
And vegetarian poets
Make me nervous quite a lot.
Talent by Carol Ann Duffy
This is the word tightrope. Now imagine
a man, inching across it in the space
between our thoughts. He holds our breath.
There is no word net.
You want him to fall, don't you?
I guessed as much; he teeters but succeeds.
The word applause is written all over him.
Passing Time by Maya Angelou
Your skin like dawn
Mine like musk
One paints the beginning
of a certain end.
The other, the end of a
sure beginning.
Dreams by Langston Hughes
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
"Hope" is the thing with feathers by Emily Dickinson
"Hope" is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—
And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—
I've heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of Me.
Where the Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake
A Walk by Rainer Maria Rilke - Translated by Robert Bly
My eyes already touch the sunny hill.
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has inner light, even from a distance-
and charges us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on
answering our own wave...
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.
By L B Hopkins...
To
make
this world
a whole lot
brighter
when
I
grow up
I’ll
be
a writer.
I’ll
write about
some things
I know —
how to bunt
how to throw . . .
a Christmas wish
a butter dish . . .
a teddy bear
an empty chair . . .
the love I have inside
to
share . . .
Yes .
To make
this world
a whole lot
brighter,
when
I grow up
I’ll
be
a
writer.
References:
http://memorytyper.com/OrgPages/MemoryTyper/Short-Poems-For-Children.aspx#.Uhy7Ij88w1k
http://angelfeet03.hubpages.com/hub/Top-Five-Best-Short-Poems
