Poetry for Children:
Choosing the Format
A guide to writing poetry with children:
Writing Poetry with Children, by Jo Ellen Moore
A guide for teachers and parents to helping children learn forms from couplets to cinquains.
A guide to writing different poetic forms:
Writing Metrical Poetry, by William Baer
This is a basic introduction for adults to writing sonnets, quatrains, and other forms of verse.
A children's book with more poetic forms:
A Kick in the Head: an Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms
This collection was selected by Paul Janeczko, and includes examples of 29 forms, from simple to complex.
Where to send poetry:
Poet's Market, edited by Robert Lee Brewer
This is a thorough guide to the market for poetry.
Click the links
above to go to Amazon for information about the book, or to buy them.
Purchase of these books helps to fund this site: find
Walk by any playground and you will be instantly struck by how much children
love rhythm and rhyme.
Listen to their games of jump
rope, hopscotch, one-potato-two-potato, and Red Rover and you will hear
a lyrical litany of joyful patterns of poetic rhythm and rhyme. Those sounds
are a natural part of a child's world and of their early celebrations of
It is no wonder, then, why children
prefer poetry that contains those musical elements. From nursery rhymes
to the longer ballads, patterns of rhythm, meter and rhyme are essential
ingredients in children's favorite poems.
One of the most popular patterns
is the couplet. Couplets have two lines that rhyme. Here are five couplets
from poems in Tickle Day: Poems from Father Goose by Charles Ghigna.
from Little Daddy Longlegs
Little Daddy Longlegs played
in the sun,
Climbing up the front steps just for fun.
from Turtle Trouble
Tell me if you think you know
How to make a turtle go.
from Tomorrow's My Birthday
Tomorrow's my birthday and
I'll be four
And I won't have to stay home anymore.
from Nature's Shows
Nature puts on little shows
Every time it rains or snows.
from It's Snow Wonder
It's snow wonder that we cheer
Snowflakes when they fall each year.
The ballad stanza is also one
of the most popular forms of poetry for children. A ballad stanza is a group
of four lines. That group is called a stanza. The ballad stanza has a rhyme
at the end of line number two and line number four. Here
are three poems that have ballad stanzas. The first poem has three ballad
stanzas. The last two poems have two. The first two poems are from Tickle
Day, the last poem is from Halloween
The Bee Poem
A poem is a busy bee
Buzzing in your head.
His hive is full of hidden thoughts
Waiting to be said.
His honey comes from your ideas
That he makes into rhyme.
He flies around looking for
What goes on in your mind.
When it's time to let him out
To make some poetry,
He gathers up your secret thoughts
And then he sets them free.
A Poem Is a Little Path
A poem is a little path
That leads you through the trees.
It takes you to the cliffs and shores,
To anywhere you please.
Follow it and trust your way
With mind and heart as one,
And when the journey's over,
You'll find you've just begun.
I'd rather be foolish than
I'd rather dress up as a clown;
I'd rather wear clothes with polka dot bows,
I'd much rather smile than frown.
I'd rather be kooky than spooky,
I'd rather be friendly than mean;
I'd rather go greeting than tricking and treating,
I'd rather have fun Halloween!
I fly above the tallest trees.
I'm not a bird or plane.
I have no wings or feathered things.
I do not like the rain.
I play among the passing clouds.
I like to rise and sail.
I am a friend who loves the wind.
I'm big and have a tail.
I like the gusty month of March.
I soar way out of sight.
My shape is like a diamond.
I am a brand-new kite.
The Everlasting Light
I shine forever free.
I do not cost a cent.
I need no bulb or battery.
My light is permanent.
You'll find me way up in the sky,
When each new day's begun,
But do not look me in the eye --
I am the shining sun.
I am a free and open field
That's never out of bounds,
Where kites and planes and boomerangs
Can do their ups and downs.
I am the biggest yard of all,
Where birds begin their play
Of hide-n-seek among the clouds
At each new break of day.
I am the place called outer space,
Where nothing is too high.
I am the home of all the stars --
I am the endless sky.