Ok, I am horrible with poetry. Let’s just say I was glad when we never got to the (required) poetry unit in Grade 10…. failed that portion of English in Grade 11, and got a zero on a test that involved poetry in Grade 12 because my eyes would just flow down the text and I honestly couldn’t read it…. my eyes just wouldn’t let me read the words.
About all I know that I want to eventually do in poetry is “The Touch of the Master’s Hand” and “The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner”. Oh, and “The Creation of Sam McGee”. However, those are for sometime in the future.
So… 2 years ago with my first grader we did A.A. Milne and Robert Stevenson and the other AO Year 1 selections. (no problems….)
This last year, we just didn’t do poetry. <GASP>
So anyway, I need suggestions for a couple of poets for us to do next year that would be great for a Grade 1 – 3 selection. My dd (5) will be in Grade 1, and my ds (7) will be in Grade 3. (ok, I know that grades are irrelevant… that is why I gave the ages too.)
I tried looking at the curriculum guide, and also in the bookfinder… but I have no idea about who the poets were and what their poetry might be like.
I’ve already selected a Canadian Poet for the year (I think the name was Denis Lee, or something like that…. wrote a book of poetry called Garbage Delight. a few looked twaddly, and I’m not sure I would compare him with A.A. Milne…. but anyway…)
I looked at the curriculum guide to see who you weren’t familiar with. Lewis Carroll (Mod 2) is nonsense poetry, such as Jabberwocky. Christina Rossetti and Robert Frost (Mod 3 & 4) are also very good. I’m no fan of poetry myself, although I was an English major in college, but I do like Frost.
If you’re unsure about specific poets, you could do seasonal poetry (DLTK has a section on that, as does AO).
I am not a huge poetry lover either. I also like Robert Frost and Christina Rossetti. I did pick up a small book of Poems For Memorization from Rod & Staff. It is broken into grade levels with maybe 30 pages of poetry per grade level, some from well-known poets, some from not-so-well-known poets. Another surprisingly nice one I have is from Christian Light Publication, titled All Day Long, 128 pages, with nice pencil drawings. These are all written by unknown (to me, at least) people, but are enjoyable.
We didn’t do poetry this past year either. I found Poems Every Child Should Know by Mary E. Burt free for Kindle on Amazon. I also discovered it on Librivox and downloaded it. But I haven’t listened to it yet, so don’t know how the recording is. I plan to use that the next 2 years (3 & 4), then use SCM recommended poets after that. If the Librivox recording is OK, I thought it would be nice to be able to listen to someone else read the poem from time to time. We’ll see how that goes.
We just read our poem today. And that’s about all it consists of…I read a poem to the boys. I have several anthologies so I choose one, actually two today, and I read them. Quick and easy but they get a taste of different poets and styles and the flow of the language. We haven’t done more formal poet studies yet. Maybe one or two this year.
One that we enjoyed was Poetry for Young People: Emily Dickenson. They have great illustrations to go with each poem, and they were very child-friendly. There are 7-9 riddles in the middle that were fun for my kiddos to figure out. There is also in the front about 4 fun information filled biography pages, again appropriate for children. Also, they were about familiar things…walking, bugs, water, trains, etc.
I have several from that series (Poetry for Young Children) that are similiar. I like them very much.
At the last Friends of the Library book sale, I found a fabulous poetry book called “Wings from the Wind – An Anthology of Poems” selected and illustrated by Tahsa Tudor in 1964. Very charming illustrations, and so fun to find some of the poems we’ve already read with new illustrations, I was very excited about it.
Don’t forget that the poems read by others on Librivox can make things much more enjoyable to you – especially if you hate to (or can’t) read it. =) I have enjoyed several things audibly that I am not sure that I could have read aloud.
A Child’s Garden of Verses, illustrated by Tasha Tudor. It is a collection of poems all by Robert Louis Stevenson. This is a really well illustrated book so you could almost count it as picture study or art as well. Definitely the antithesis of “twaddle” :o)
I am planning to use it for our first poetry study this coming school year.
Tasha Tudor also illustrated a collection of Emily Dickenson’s poetry, it is called A Brighter Garden. I haven’t seen that one yet but it sounds great too.