What is your favourite primary school age suitable poem?

[nowwearefour]

dd1 has to learn one by heart over half term and perform it afterwards. Any recommendations welcome!

Thanks

Brian Moses - Aliens Stole My Underpants. It is quite long but the rhyme helps to make it memorable. What age is your dd?

The Jabberwocky, I learnt it for a prose competition when I was about 8 and it's still rattling around my head now :)

How old is she?

One of my children performed The Broomstick Train (first verse only) by Oliver Wendell Holmes - which was a favourite of mine when I was young and very suitable for this time of year.

Thanks! Will have a look

There once was a man named Michael Finnegan
Grew some whiskers on his chinegan
The wind came in and blew the inagain
Poor old Michael Finnegan beginagain

She is 7- yr 3

Spike Milligan
Ode to a Goldfish

Oh
Wet
Pet!

Spaghetti! spaghetti!
you're wonderful stuff,
I love you, spaghetti,
I can't get enough.
You're covered with sauce
and your sprinkled with cheese,
spaghetti! Spaghetti!
oh, give me some more please.

Theres another verse too I think, it's from a book called noisy poems.

i like that goldfish one - clever but not sure it will get her into the teacher's best books!

I eat my peas with honey
I've done it all my life
It makes the peas taste funny
But it keeps them on the knife

What about A.A. Milne's 'The King's Breakfast'? Shorter than the Mose one and good fun to read aloud.

The owl and the pussycat, ( jumblies is my ultimate favourite).

DD loves Please Mrs Butler

What about Spike Milligan - Ning Nang Nong

When I was 10 I had to memorise this poem:

There's a Goblin as green
as a Goblin can be
Who is sitting outside
And is waiting for me.
When he knocked on my door
And said softly, "Come play!"
I answered, "No thank you,
Now please go away!"

But the goblin as green
As a goblin can be
Is still sitting outside
And is waiting for me.

Not my favourite but quite short and I still remember it.

This is the night mail crossing the border?

An Owner's Complaint by John Hegley

I've got a dog that's more
like a carrot than a dog.
It's hairy,
but only very slightly.
It's got no personality
to speak of,
no bark to bark of,
no head
no legs
no tail
and it's all
orange
and
crunchy.

some of these are just amazing. i will put lots before her and let her choose!

DD recited Letters to the Three Pigs by Clare Bevan for an audition which she really liked.

If I were choosing a shorter one I might go for

'Arry 'ad 'an 'awk on an 'atstand
The 'awk made an 'orrible row
'Arry 'it the 'awk with an 'eavy 'ard 'ammer
'Arry aint got no 'awk now

which always makes me smile :)

I like the Owners Complaint though I've never heard that one!

From A Railway Carriage by Robert Louis Stevenson- my two know this one pretty well and it has a great train rhythm to it "Faster than fairies, Faster than Witches, bridges and houses, hedges and ditches..." Other good ones by Stevenson are The Swing and My Shadow. For more of a performance you could go for Please Mrs Butler or there is a good one called "First Day at school." My two also love Disobedience by AA Milne :"James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree took good care of his mother though he was only three..." There are other great AA Milne poems to look at as well. You could also look in The Nation's Favourite Children's poems book which has quite a variety of authors. A favourite of my boys is Spike Milligans The Worm "today I saw a little worm, Wriggling on his belly. Perhaps he'd like to come inside and see what's on the telly!!"

i third or fourth AA Milne, esp

• Kings Breakfast
• Sneezles and wheezles (Christopher Robin had sneezles and wheezles, they bundled him into his bed...)
• Lines and squares (whenever I walk in a london street...)
• Binker (Binker, what a call him, is a secret of my own)
• Forgiven (I found a little beetle, so that beetle was his name...)
• Rice Pudding (What is the matter with mary jane...)

I think they're all great as you can get fantastically animated as the rhymes repeat, esp with Forgiven (nanny let my beetle out, YES nanny let my beetle out, nanny LET MY BEETLE OUT and beetle ran away)

Other suggestions lovely (I can still do jaberwocky after I learnt it for a class competition when I was 8) but AA Milne is my first love!