Three Creative Ways to Incorporate Poetry into Children’s Crafts

Posted by Elevyn Lopez on August 14th, 2019

Poetry is a great way to boost a child’s language skills. It encourages literacy and teaches children how to rhyme and be expressive with their words. It is also a great to get children interested in reading and writing. If you are interested in how to develop your child’s poetry skills, here are three fun craft ideas to help build your child’s literacy and creativity:

1. Make a ‘Poe-tree’

Create a tree with short poems written over its branches. These can either be a few of your favorite poems or ones that your child has written. Print them onto white sheets of paper and paste then on the branches. When they’re feeling emotional, encourage them to write down their feelings and continue to place new poems on the branches as time goes by. To make the leaves, gather blank stationary cards, glue, safety scissors, a hole-punch, and some ribbon. Have your child assist you on putting the tree together and place it where they can read it every now and then.

2. Make a shape poem

Shape poems describe a particular object and are written in the shape of that object. For example, a poem about the moon may be shaped as a crescent or a circle. To create a shape poem of your own you will need a pencil, scissors, construction paper or card stock and some markers or crayons for decorating.

To begin, have your child think of their favorite shape and help them draw it. Any sort of shape can be used such as a heart, football, star, raindrop, or even a kite attached to a string. Encourage your child to think of different ways to describe the shape using words or phrases. Try having them start with five words and slowly increase to ten overtime. Help them write the words down inside the shape. Read it back to them, this is a great way to help your child develop their poetry and creative thinking skills.

3. Craft books

An easy way to teach poetry is to buy arts and craft books for children. These books have a variety of crafts and activities to perform, are affordable and are readily available on the market. There are so many exciting ideas offered and time can be spent picking out a craft to do together.

These are just a few examples of how to incorporate Poetry into children’s crafts. By incorporating these ideas, you can encourage your child to brainstorm different words to describe everyday items they see. This will help their creative mind flourish and encourage their poetic side to blossom.

Author’s bio: the author is a blogger and the article is about poetry.