Poetry Writing Ideas for Kindergarten

For emerging readers, poetry can be a difficult genre to grasp. However, when you think of all the stories written for kindergarten that are told in rhyme, you’ll realize how much your younger students are already exposed to poetic concepts. When teaching poetry, try out these poetry writing lessons for kindergarten, and they’ll be reading and writing poems in no time.

Start with rhyme

Rhyming is important to develop phonemic awareness in early readers. Your kinders will giggle at the Cat in the Hat or Shel Silverstein’s poems when they hear the silly rhyming words. Use these stories and poems to reinforce the concept of rhyme. Try making a list of one syllable words and brainstorm rhyming words. Expand by making couplets that rhyme and then developing the couplets into multi-line stanzas. Viola, you have a poem!

Sing it!

Go acapella or break out the playlist of your favorite kid-friendly rhyming songs. Write down the end rhyme words to talk about rhyme and rhyme scheme in music with your kids. Start simple (i.e. “Twinkle twinkle little star/how I wonder what you are). Once they identify rhyme and rhyme scheme in the songs, try letting your students write their own songs. You may provide a list of rhyming words or some song frames to get them started. This is a perfect chance to use student peers from upper elementary classrooms to help students read and write the words.

Try terrific tongue twisters

Your super silly sweeties will be giggling at tongue twisters like “Sally sells seashells by the seashore” and “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.” Wait until you tell your kids that tongue twisters use alliteration or repeating consonant, hard letter sounds the beginning or words. Let your students come up with their own alliteration examples. Share some examples from the master of alliteration in poetry, Shel Silverstein.

Say it with sound

Kindergarteners love onomatopoeia words or words whose sounds suggest their meanings. Share “Garfield” or other old comment strips that use sound words as a huge part of the illustrations. Show a clip from the old “Batman” TV series where the onomatopoeia words flash on the screen. Sing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” for animal noises perfect for teaching this concept. Have your students make noises and then write the words on the board, so they can see them in action. Try writing a poem as a class that uses all sorts of sound words.

Make poetry books

Make each student a poetry book with relevant poetry vocabulary terms and special poems, pictures, and reflection pages. Adapt this concept for kindergarten by providing written poems for them in the books. Allow students to color code the rhymes, practice writing rhyming words, and draw pictures and simple sentences to reflect on poems they read and write in class.

Who said poetry is too advanced for kindergarten? Your students will be ready to learn with these fun poetry writing lessons for kindergarten!

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