K is for Kids

Remi a.k.a the Pug

K is for kids. According to Northrop Frye, literary critic and theorist, “the speech of a child is full of chanting and singing and it is clear that the child understands what many adults do not, that verse is more direct and primitive way of conventionalizing speech then prose is.” This is why children love Mother Goose and Dr. Seuss. 

How do you get kids involved in writing poetry? I remember doing this simple exercise in school. The teacher handed out a list of random words and instructed the class to cut them up and create some sort of poem out of it. Another version of this exercise is to buy a kit containing letters and put them on the fridge and let your kid(s) use them to create poems right on the fridge door.  I found an online version of this exercise called “Poetic Magnetic Poetry Kit,” in which a list of random words is displayed that you can use to create a poem.
Challenge

--Please go to the online version of Poetic Magnetic Poetry Kit by clicking here. Use the words displayed to create a poem. You can click on the “more words” button if you need more words for your poem.  If you have kids have them help you create a poem (I’ll be asking my childish husband to help me).

Resources

--Poetry 4 Kids created by Kenn Nesbitt is excellent website full of games, funny poems, and poems written by kids.

--To learn more about Kenn Nesbitt stop by No Water River to read an interview, while you are there read and watch some of Renee LaTulippe’s fabulous poems.

If you liked this post please let others know. Tomorrow children's writer and poet Catherine Johnson, will be joining us to talk about limericks. I hope you come back for that.

*What do you photograph when you don't have kids? Your pets of course!