The Best Ways to Introduce Your Child to Poetry
It’s widely recognized that poetry is very important for a child’s vocabulary and development. When you realize this as a parent, then you may ask yourself how you can introduce your child to poetry and get him or her interested in it.
What’s the best method to introduce your child to poetry?
Poetry is a universal language. It helps children grow in sensitivity, increases their creativity, and helps them better understand situations and emotions. With its rhythm and expression, it helps them understand words and feelings in a deeper way.
There are many theories about the different ways to get your child interested in poetry. However, today we’re going to bring you the most popular methods – the ones that have proven to be most effective. They’re the simplest ways to introduce children to poetry.
Let’s look at each way in order to understand why they’re so effective and how you can implement them into your child’s life.
Introduce your child to poetry by reading it together
There’s no better way to expose your child to poetry than by reading it. There are many children’s poetry books that you can enjoy with your child. It’s an accepted fact that reading to our children is very important. And, when we read poetry books, there are several additional benefits.
When listening to poetry, the child hears the rhythm of the words and observes the patterns within the text. This helps your child recognize metrics and rhyme.
A great habit to enhance your relationship with your child is to read poetry together every day. It can be a short poem, a book of stories with rhymes, or even a children’s song. Incorporating poetry books into your child’s regular reading habits is a great way to start bringing your little one closer to poetry.
Memorizing poems
Memorizing poems is a good way to develop children’s memory. This way, children learn while having fun, and especially love it when you choose a poem they like. They enjoy the fact that they’re getting to know the words and can almost repeat it along with you.
Once you introduce the habit of reading poetry with, or to, your child, then you can start memorizing rhymes. Ideally, start with short and simple poems, and increase their complexity over time.
A great idea would even be to organize a poetry recital with your child and other relatives and friends. Poetry is very easy to memorize. But you must also ensure that your child likes the poem or poems in question.
Writing poetry
Once we’ve covered reading and learning poems, we can begin with the next phase: having children create their own poems. A good way to start is by using poems they already know, and encouraging them to change some rhyming words or phrases for others.
Another way to start is by encouraging them to draw pictures and then adding some of the rhymes they like. Then, little by little, they can start creating some of their own. This will come naturally.
Writing their own poems is, without a doubt, one of the best ways to introduce children to poetry. This is because they do it naturally and progressively, and it makes them feel that the poems are really theirs.
Listening to poetry
This method of introducing your child to poetry is very a positive one. Listening to children’s songs is a good way to start to introduce children to poetry, especially when they’re young. Babies and toddlers love listening to simple fun songs.
To do this, you can search for some popular children’s songs or choose any easy song that you know the child likes, ones that have fun rhymes for them to enjoy. There are also some books of poems on the market that include their own CD; this is also a very good option.
Children tend to be very receptive to poetry. It’s something they accept as a new game – a game with words. It’s important to start reading poetry to children as well as reading them stories. Find a quiet moment, a quiet place, and enjoy the magic of rhymes with your child.