Poetry For Toddlers

I have always loved poetry and as a teenager full of angst I wrote tons of poems, and now have teams of them up in the loft.

When I saw the new Tots 100 Center Parcs poetry challenge I thought I would use it as a prompt to include H in some poetry fun. As she is nearly three, she is still too young to really understand poetry. but by creating a found poem and putting together a list of words it made it an activity she could join in.

Last week we went on a lovely autumn walk and collected lots of leaves, which we are part-way through making a garland out of. We gathered together some of the leaves, some pens and some coloured paper and had a little chat about our walk.

I asked H about the leaves - they were crunchy, circles, had spots on, and were various colours.

We talked about the walk - she wore her news shoes, we skipped, walked, collected and were silly. We saw a birdie. It was a long walk.

I then added some joining words such as and, the and in.

Once I had written them on strips of paper (with H choosing which colour paper and pen I used), we gathered all the words together, went in the front room and H threw them in the air (a bit like leaves falling from the tree).

Once they were all mixed up she passed them to me one by one. I lined them up and then moved a couple down onto the next line and our autumn poem was complete: