Can Reading Poetry Enable Any Kind of Learning In Children?
Venkatalakshmi Vikram, a parent who homeschools her daughter says, that poems work wonders in making the learning process fun!
Venkatalakshmi Vikram is also the founder of Beyond Books (A Children’s Book Club in Chennai). An article she stumbled upon during her research prompted her to use poetry as a means to enable her daughter not just to practice reading but also learn many fascinating, new things about the world around us. Venkatalakshmi shares her experiments with poetry..
Our daughter was thorough with Phonics (sounds of all alphabet) and had started to read 3 letter words and simple sentences slowly, word by word. After working together a lot to achieve this, we wondered what next? We decided to explore ‘Phonemic awareness’ involving sounds in spoken words. During my research to find learning resources for the same, I stumbled upon this article :
https://curiouscaterpillarss.com/short-poems-for-kids-literacy-tool-child-needs/
Soon after reading that article, I thought introducing poems to a four year old was a bit too much! Any how I decided to simply give it a try and picked a colourful poems book from our home library. At that point, ‘The Booktime Book of Fantastic First Poems’ was the only book in our collection of books. Over time I started to realise that poems can help a child in many different ways.
1. Phonic Sounds Awareness: When you recite a poem to your child, you are introducing them to phonic sounds. True to what I read in the above article, as I recited the poems one after the other, Vania began to repeat after me! We had so much fun with the rhyming words:) We kept reciting the poems again and again giggling all the way! Vania wanted more poetry books. So, the next day, we visited the library and found yet another beautiful book of poems and rhymes. Gradually we bought more rhymes and poems books adding to our collection.
We had so much fun with the rhyming words:) We kept reciting the poems again and again giggling all the way!
2. Vocabulary, new rhyming words, memory skills: The rhythmic structure of poetry, makes it easier for kids to remember them. Also poems for kids help in enhancing their listening skills and comprehension abilities.
Poems for kids help in enhancing their listening skills and comprehension abilities.
The rhymes and poems in the following books are helping us achieve all of this:-
a) ‘The Booktime Book of Fantastic First Poems’:
Part 1 : Animal Poems
Part 2 : Fun & Nonsense Poems
b) ‘My Shadow & Other Poems’
‘Betty Botter Bought Some Butter’ is Vania’s favourite in this book:)
c) ‘Rhymes for Annie Rose’:
Alfie and Annie in Shirley Hughes books are all time favourites for Vania, it’s no surprise she is hooked to this book as well! With pictures full of amusing details and immediately recognisable situations, this book travels with us wherever we go:)
One of our favourites from this books is the poem “Monday Morning Dance”. The illustration of this poem is very easy for Vania to relate. So much so, one day when I was busy doing laundry, sorting,shoving Vania’s dirty clothes, she brought out this book. As we read it together, she was able to relate to every bit of the poem to what was actually happening in front of her. She thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
d) The Oxford 123 book of number rhymes:
Counting from 1 to 10 is more fun with this book of rhymes, a first number book, and a picture book, all in one! This book is so beautiful and makes learning numbers so easy for Vania! I found “Number formation rhymes” too which helps in writing the numbers!
Going Forward…
It does look like we are going to be reading poems together for some more time. She hasn’t chosen story books to read in the last two months. She has just started to learn writing alphabets and numbers. Using poems to facilitate this process has helped a lot. She is having fun writing; be it learning months, weekdays, counting, seasons…Poems have it all.
Read a teacher’s perspective to using poetry:-
For discussion
- Parents, have you found poetry to be useful in enabling your child to enjoy learning new things or maybe even enjoy reading?
- Teachers, do you often use poetry in your classroom. Has it helped? If yes how?
For more such discussions on encouraging children to read for pleasure and knowledge, please join THE READING JOURNEY by MERRYGOBOOKS GROUP on Facebook. If you would like to contribute, please write to me at lakshmi.mitter@yahoo.com.
