April is National Poetry Month! Take advantage of this opportunity to expose your child to this wonderful form of artistry. Poems are short, fun, and easy to understand. The rhyming words help develop an awareness of language fundamentals and naturally help boost reading skills.
Following are five ways that you can further increase the learning value of sharing poetry with your child.
1. Use facial expressions and gestures to convey the meaning.
2. Use voice inflection, especially to emphasize the humor in funny poems.
3. Encourage your child to read the poem in character and use his/her own facial expressions, gestures, and voice inflections.
4. Take turns playing different characters from the poems.
5. Help your child illustrate a favorite poem together.
Of course, letter P praises poetry profusely and has become pretty proficient at it herself after many periods of patient practice. It’s her privilege to share one of her poems in honor of this special National Poetry Month.
Oh, the love of pizza
Letter P’s most pleasant passion
Picture-perfect pastry platefuls
Prepared in pleasing fashion.
All preferences for toppings
Provided with proud precision
And pampering every patron
Letter P’s prevailing vision.
(Plus, you might notice that Letter P is prone to pursuing excellent vocabulary and purposely packs new words in her poems whenever practical).
Now it’s your turn! Why not grab a pen and paper and produce a poem of your own? It’s the perfect way to participate. Poetry is poised to pop up in plenty of places — positively!
