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Experiencing poetry with children

by | Apr 16, 2012 | Poetry

Experiencing Poetry with Children | Simple ways your family can incorporate poetry in your homeschool

I’m excited to welcome Mystie Winckler as a guest blogger today as we continue celebrating National Poetry Month

POETRY IS a wonderful component to add to our school days. It develops language patterns, listening skills, and complex thinking ability. Andrew Pudewa writes:

There is perhaps no greater tool than memorization to seal language patterns into a human brain, and there is perhaps nothing more effective than poetry to provide exactly what we want: reliably correct and sophisticated language patterns.

But poetry can also be intimidating.

Here are some simple steps that my family has taken to incorporate poetry in our homeschool. [Please note that this post contains affiliate links to poetry resources we think your family will love.]

Particularly when the children are elementary and younger, focus on introducing and enjoying poems together. Don’t worry about analysis or interpretation or even comprehension. Just let them experience and enjoy poetry at their own level.

Allow the time and space for love and taste to develop before teaching content and analysis. Then the analysis in later years will be more like sharing thoughts about common friends and less like dissecting a dead frog.

Mystie Winckler is a wife, mother, homemaker, and home-educator. Mystie has been married for ten years to her only sweetheart, Matt, a software programmer and web developer; both Matt & Mystie were homeschool graduates themselves. Now they raise & educate their four-going-on-five children. Mystie blogs at Simply Convivial on homemaking, home-educating, reading, and organizing.