How do you cover poetry with your children? How do teachers engage children in poetry?

[spookysal]

I recently bought 'Where my wellies take me' by Michael and Claire Morpurgo, which is a beautiful book.

It includes poetry and I am wondering how to cover this with 5yo dd1. She won't understand a lot of it but do I just read it to anyway? Will she find it boring? How can I engage her in it?

Would appreciate any advice and suggestions. Or just experiences on how your dc react to poetry.

Just noticed the Hilda Boswell poetry book I linked to is priced at £54!! they are available for much less elswhere - a few pounds only.

A A Milne "When we are Very Young" and then "Now we are Six"- just bought these for my just turned 4 and just turned 6 year old. Mostly because I have fond childhood memories of both . Apart from that lots of picture books are rhyming, Julia Donaldson the obvious choice, but Commotion in the Ocean, trying to think of others but can't for the moment!

I would second the Kaye Umansky books, The Spooks Step Out and The Empty Suit of Armour. DS just 6 can read them himself but enjoys me reading them to him too.

I think you can do two things, read them whatever you like, whether they understand it or not, just the sound of something you enjoy will be engaging, rich vocabularly etc etc. Then if you read easier, more child friendly books you can get them to join in a bit more- DD loves filling in gaps for example, I'll read the line but leave the last word for her to fill in. (she can't read, she remembers).

My dd was given a treasury of poems as a Christening present. She loved choosing poems from it for her bedtime story. In fact we used it so much I have often bought the same book for other children.

Hairy Mclarey- and make up your own dog names and what they do eg 'Spotty legs likes eating eggs' 'Tinker toes, sniffs with his nose' etc- you can help with the 2nd bit. Maybe draw pics of the dogs.

Dr Seuss- read and add your own rhyming words to the list eg Knox, box, fox, pox, socks, shocks. Do in a funny way.

Never use a knife and fork
www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0230016162/ref=mp_s_a_1?qid=1353817643&sr=8-1&pi=SL75

First poems
www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0141308982/ref=mp_s_a_1?qid=1353817717&sr=8-1&pi=SL75

Nonsense poetry works really well here: Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll and Spike Milligan are all favourites. My 5 year old DD really enjoys the nonsense element. Her class teacher used "The Ning Nang Nong Song" as part of their phonics teaching which I thought was really good. Julia Donaldson, Dr Seuss, Giles Andrae, Hairy Mclary also go down well here, as does Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes, although it helps if they know the fairy story versions first!

DD was bringing home some poetry reading books from school and found them more tricky than story books, I think because it's more difficult to get the narrative and the metre from a poem until you can scan read.

FWIW, I learnt a lot of poetry at school from an early age and whilst I loathed some of it at the time (don't ask me to recite "Daffodils" by Wordworth ever, even though I still can, bloody wandering lonely as a cloud) I love the space it takes up in my head now. Helps hugely with dealing with Shakespeare later, too. The bits I loved were the fun, nonsense bits and I reckon that's the key.