Simple Poetry Activities to Keep Kids Learning (Without Realizing It) All Summer
Tick tock, around the block…
What will we find on our walk?
With summer in full swing, where parents (and grandparents) find themselves planning all manner of activities for kids, it’s hard to know how to balance fun and play with a little bit of learning.
In this blog post, we cover a few simple poetry activities that will keep kids learning (without even knowing it) all summer long.
‘Falling behind’ is a common concern of parents of school-aged kids. ‘ The good news? There are simple poetry activities grown ups can do to sneak in some learning disguised as fun during the summer months.
Especially with poetry!
Simple Poetry Activity #1: Try a Poetry Walk
What if you went for a walk in the park or your neighborhood and, using this little rhyme, asked kids to find rhymes for as many words as they can for what they see in nature?
It fills me with glee to spy a tree.
Where’s he at, the neighborhood cat?
Look at that flower, taking a shower!
Those are simple, silly rhymes that can keep kids’ thinking well oiled and also be a seed for more ideas.
Simple Poetry Activity #2: Incorporate Poetry Into an Ice Cream Outing
What if you went out for ice cream and read this together?
Ice cream-chocolate,
Vanilla with bright sprinkles.
Ice cream in a bucket?
Why, I’ll take a sink full!
Again, a silly rhyme but a way to get the wheels turning to think poetically no matter what the occasion.
These activities can also spur on your own thinking while you’re driving to and from the grocery store, washing dishes, sitting on the couch, or setting up a splash pad–where and how can you find some poetic rhymes?
(If you come up with one, please share it in the comments so others can try it too!)
Simple Poetry Activity #3: Read Poetry Aloud
Another simple poetry activity is simply reading poetry to your kids this summer. Attuning kids to poetry begins with training their ears to listen….and reading poems takes only 10 or 15 minutes a day (or a week, if that’s all you’ve got!).
For parents who want to dive a little deeper, here’s a list of 15 poems in the public domain that can be found via the search engine of your choice. Find the poem, download and print it to keep in a poetry notebook for reading in the slivers of time this summer.
15 Poems Every Kid Should Know
1. Afternoon on a Hill, Edna St Vincent Millay, 1917
2. Daffodils (I wandered lonely as a cloud), William Wordsworth, 1802
3. Good Morning, from Pippa Passes, Robert Browning, 1841
4. Hope Is the Thing with Feathers, Emily Dickinson, 1861
5. Hurt no Living Thing, Christina Rossetti, 1872
6. Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll, 1871
7. My Shadow, Robert Louis Stevenson, 1885
8. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost, 1922
9. The Caterpillar, Christina Rossetti, 1872
10. The Eagle, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1851
11. The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost, 1915
12. The Tyger, William Blake, 1794
13. There was an Old Man with a Beard and There Was an Old Man in a Garden,
Edward Lear, 1846
14. We Have a Little Garden, Helen Beatrix Potter, 1922
15. Who Has Seen the Wind?, Christina Rossetti, 1847
HONORABLE MENTIONS
The Frog, Hilliare Belloc, 1896
The Arrow and The Song, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1845
If you’d like to download the FREE list of 15 poems, that link is HERE.
10 Best Poetry Books for Kids
- Now We Are Six, A.A. Milne, with decorations by Ernest H. Shepard. c. 1927
- Opposites, More Opposites and a Few Differences, Poems and Drawings by Richard Wilbur, 1973.
- A Child’s Garden of Verses, Robert Louis Stevenson
- Poems to Learn by Heart, Caroline Kennedy, paintings by John J. Muth. Poems in categories “That’s so Silly!”, “Bedtime”, “The Seashore” & more.
- A Family of Poems, My Favorite Poetry for Children, Edited by Caroline Kennedy
- Dear Miss Tickle, Poetry & Art for the Young at Heart, Marcia Lynch
- The Oxford Illustrated Book of American Children’s Poems, edited by Donald Hall.
- Hailstones and Halibut Bones-Adventures in Color, by Mary O’Neill
- The Random House Book of Poetry for Children, A Treasury of 572 Poems, selected by Jack Prelutsky, Illustrated by Arnold Lobel.
- When We Were Very Young, A.A. Milne, with decorations by Ernest H. Shepard. c. 1924
If you’d like to download the FREE list above, that link is HERE.
More Simple Poetry Activities
And to keep kids busy AND learning, with only 15-30 minutes a day (or per week!) I’ve created more FREE simple poetry activities for kids ages 5 to 18, all available via my Resource Library HERE. Activities include printable downloads like these:
- How to “Write” a Poem with Pictures
- Using a Nonsense Poem to Learn Grammar & Vocabulary
- How to use ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ to write a Rhyming Poem
- 5 Things to Know about Poetry
- 9 Reasons to Read Poetry
- and more!
If you find yourself needing a simple poetry activity this summer, be sure to check out the free resources. They make the perfect activity for a rainy day or when the kids just need a little break from the sun!
Happy summer! I hope these simple poetry activities will help keep your kids learning this summer and give you a break from coming up with what to do next!