What poems do you recommend for a young child to memorise?

[fajfall]

Reading 'How To Teach Your Children Shakespeare', Ken Ludwig instructs children to memorise and recite Shakespeare passages as the best way to truly appreciate the text. I want my young child to do this with poetry when he turns 5, but I don't know what poems to teach him. Can you suggest some?

[YesNo]

There are the Mother Goose rhymes, but I suspect you want something deeper. I only know a handful of them myself.

Memorizing short texts is good for the brain no matter what the age especially if one recites them throughout the day when the internal chatter starts. If it is used for that purpose, you would want those texts to be the as highly significant to you as possible. One text that I've memorized is Hopkins' "Spring and Fall" http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173665

[Ruben Meijerink]

Hmm difficult question, because 5 is pretty young, but here's some brainstorming:

"Daffodils" ~ William Wordsworth (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174790)

"Living Tenderly" ~ May Swenson

My body a rounded stone
with a pattern of smooth seams.
My head a short snake,
retractive, projective.
My legs come out of their sleeves
or shrink within,
and so does my chin.
My eyelids are quick clamps.

My back is my roof.

I am always at home. I travel where my house walks.
It is a smooth stone.
It floats within the lake,
or rests in the dust.
My flesh lives tenderly
inside its bone.


~And maybe the animal poems by D.H. Lawrence?

[qimissung]

Maybe something by Christina Rossetti:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171952

The Wind

[qimissung]

Or Robert Louis Stevenson:
http://m.poemhunter.com/poem/the-swing/

[fajfall]

Thanks for suggestions thus far, yes deep and meaningful poems are what I have in mind. Eg with Shakespeare, Ludwig recommends comedies because the themes are more innocent and children don't need to ruminate on death, sadness etc. even for myself, I find the comedies put me in a happier and funnier mood than when I read macbeth

[Delta40]

Edward Lear. http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-pobble-who-has-no-toes/ http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-jumblies/

[Danik 2016]

As I love cats:
http://storyit.com/Classics/JustPoems/twokittens.htm

[qimissung]

Ahhh, Danik, I love that poem! That was in an anthology of children's stories and poems we had as kids. Good memories.

[qimissung]

And Edward Lear is awesome, too, Delta. My kids loved Shel Silverstein, also.

[Lokasenna]

Jabberwocky?

[fajfall]

I can't manage to thank and reply to each good recommendation above. I love how a subject as simple as a turtle or the wind can be made into such a vivid, joyful image deep in one's mind simply by the use of words. This is an excellent start to a love of literature, and a great start to life itself. I've never appreciated literature because non-fiction is 'real', factual, practical whilst literature seemed to have no tangible use. But i'm starting to see what all the fuss is about and I'll be happy see my children 'get it' at an age far younger than mine. Keep the recommendations coming if you like, I'm enjoying it!

(Ludwig's first introduction to Shakespeare is like a poem too, from A Midsummer Night's Dream: "I know a bank where the wild thyme grows / where oxlips and the knifing violet grows / quite over canopied with luscious woodbine / with sweet musk roses and with eglantine. / etc...)

[Logos]

http://www.online-literature.com/coleridge/646/

Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Yes I know it's mega-long and I myself don't have it memorised but I know a very young person who knows it by heart and loves to recite it with her parents :nod:

[Mohammad Ahmad]

All poems dealing with respecting parents and countries

[bounty]

I think mohammad's suggestion above points to this---if you are going to memorize poems, the question of the worth of doing so, apart from a purely academic exercise would be "why do I want my kids or students to memorize them", which leads to the nature of the poems and then I would pick the poems accordingly.

if I value x, y and z, then the poetry memorization is in keeping with that.

[SarahJane1701]

Hey there,
William Blake wrote some beautiful short poems which have a lot of meaning but are also fairly short and simple for a child to learn. Here is an example:

The Fly

Little Fly
Thy summer's play
My thoughtless hand
Has brush'd away

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance
And drink & sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength & breath,
And the want
Of thought is death;

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.

[tranthuphuong]

to understand what your child wants we will as what you teach it to read the content of the right age and let them do what it likes in a natural way in your control to them can be developed ourselves

[desiresjab]

I think mohammad's suggestion above points to this---if you are going to memorize poems, the question of the worth of doing so, apart from a purely academic exercise would be "why do I want my kids or students to memorize them", which leads to the nature of the poems and then I would pick the poems accordingly.

if I value x, y and z, then the poetry memorization is in keeping with that.

I believe in reading poetry to kids, I don't believe in making kids memorize poetry. Though it might not be entirely useless, any five year old has many more precious and urgent enterprises to devote his attention to than memorizing poems beyond a couplet in length. Doing so seems like a backward step to scholasticism where rote memory was a big part of education.


I believe in reading poetry to kids, I don't believe in making kids memorize poetry. Though it might not be entirely useless, any five year old has many more precious and urgent enterprises to devote his attention to than memorizing poems beyond a couplet in length. Doing so seems like a backward step to scholasticism where rote memory was a big part of education.

That said, Yeats's father was a tyrant at the dinner table, always dramatically reciting Shakespeare and other poets through the meals. Some must have rubbed off. Or maybe the rubbing off was through the genes--since W.B's. daddy liked Shakespeare enough in the first place to quote him all the time.

[fajfall]

http://www.online-literature.com/coleridge/646/

Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Yes I know it's mega-long and I myself don't have it memorised but I know a very young person who knows it by heart and loves to recite it with her parents :nod:

Inspired by this comment, I started memorising the Rine myself. I've memorised about 1/3rd of it, and I think it's a great way to improve vocabulary, grammar and style for a young person's writing. But how young is the very young child? The poem includes death and horror so I don't know I want a, say, 7 year old reflecting on it if it can be disturbing.

[Pushka]

+1 to Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Despite its age it helps with vocabulary very much.

[Scheherazade]

Does anyone ask their children memorise anything? They might learn it by heart if they enjoy it but I would never ask them to memorise.

[Jackson Richardson]

It was very unfashionable to get children to learn poetry by heart when I was young and I think that's a mistake. Children should be encouraged to learn by heart at some time, but not so often as to put them off it in future. They should be taught things they wouldn't pick up for themselves and then they know if they like it.


Five sounds awfully young to start on some of the suggestions. I was so precocious I was reading (or trying to read) Dickens by the time I was seven, but at five I was still on Janet and John.

[fajfall]

That said, Yeats's father was a tyrant at the dinner table, always dramatically reciting Shakespeare and other poets through the meals. Some must have rubbed off. Or maybe the rubbing off was through the genes--since W.B's. daddy liked Shakespeare enough in the first place to quote him all the time.

That's hilarious. I like the father in Brideshead Revisited, who is so academic yet so aloof he asks his son what age the son is whilst at the dinner table.

All too often when people say that kids need to kids, I see kids lazing around watching tv and playing computer games. That's basically all I did as a kid and I didn't even know of the literature books in parent room until I was in my 20's.

These days parents assume fragility in children rather than strength. I think if a child can recite difficult passages and understand them they'll feel axcomplished, not frayed. In grade 5, the smartest girl in my class listed Shakespeare as her hero, when we listed Van Dam and Schwartzenegger. Clearly she's been taught a love of adult literature at home because our school taught us little and our parents littler still.