Welcome to week three of our 10-week Poetry for Kids course! This week, you get to try your hand at several fun and easy poetry forms.
It can feel a little intimidating to sit down and try to write a poem. There are lots of types of poems that are designed to make it easier. Some of these include haiku (where you only write three lines, with a certain number of syllables in each), acrostics (where you spell out a word going down and start each line with that letter) and limericks (those silly five-line poems that start “There once was a man from…”).
There is even such a thing as “found poetry,” where you take words you find in someplace normal (like an ad or part of a newspaper article) and you break it up into lines that make it into a poem. Here’s the start of a found poem as an example…
Order in the Streets
(from instructions printed on a child’s toy, Christmas 1968, as reported in the New York Times)
by Donald Justice
- 1.2.3
- Switch on.
- Jeep rushes
- to the scene
- of riot.
- Jeep goes
- in all directions
- by mystery action…
There are lots of other kinds of simple poetry forms, too. These forms can help you take those first steps in writing poems and they also can be pretty fun!
Here are some pages that list all different kinds of easy poetry forms for kids:
- Holmdel Schools has a great list of lots of kinds of poetry, with good explanations about how to do each type.
- Tooter4Kids has another great round-up of fun and easy types of poetry for kids to try.
- Buzzle has a long list of all different kinds of poetry.
Look over the types of poetry on these pages and try your hand at several of them. You can try several today or try doing a different type each day this week. Share your finished poems with your family members.
This week:
- Pay special attention to anything you see in print and think about whether it could be turned into found poetry.
- Keep reading poetry together as a family.
- Try to memorize one short poem to recite.
Note: This article is part of a ten-week free poetry course for kids. Click here to see all ten week’s worth of articles with summaries and links for each.
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