Jump to content

Menu

Favorite Poems to memorize?


Recommended Posts

Listening in! I was thinking about posting a similar thread. My kids are 5th, 3rd, and K and this year we have memorized so far The Wind by Christina Rosetti and The Road not Taken by Robert Frost, and are currently working on Christmas Bells by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My kids memorized Maggie, Millie, Molly and May by ee cummings, Hope is the Thing with Feathers by Emily Dickinson, the Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, a section of the witches lines in Macbeth, stopping by the woods by Robert Frost, the first few stanzas of the Raven by Poe, and Hamlets soliloquy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My kids all memorized The Jabberwocky in 5th/6th and it was their favorite by far. My approach lately has been to have a few poetry books around and let them choose what to memorize, as long as it is challenging enough. They really enjoy doing it that way.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

For the older ones, my son says The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and my daughter says Hunting Song of the Seeonee Pack by Rudyard Kipling. My favorite is The Song of Wandering Aengus by W.B. Yeats. We also really like Goblin Feet by J.R.R. Tolkien.

 

For the little ones, I suggest First Fig and Second Fig by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Afternoon on a Hill (also by Millay), and This is Just to Say by William Carlos Williams.

 

I also suggest purchasing the book A Family of Poems by Caroline Kennedy. It's got lovely poems and simply gorgeous artwork.

 

ETA: Yikes! I mixed up my Millay and my Rossetti! I should be flogged!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Many great ones already mentioned, but I didn't see The Bells by Poe (the Raven is a fun one too).

 

My kids have all chosen different Tolkien poems (Fifteen Birds, Bilbo's bath Song, The Man in the Moon, etc).

 

I second If by Kipling, Stopping by Woods by Frost, Jabberwocky by Carroll, and Charge of the Light Brigade by lord Tennyson.

 

My youngers have loved R Stevenson and C Rosetti poems. They also find Hilaire Belloc quite amusing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Some things we do to help with poetry memorization (principally for longer poems):

 

1) We get to know the poet. We read about the poet online or in a short children's biography.

2) We figure out what the poem is about. I clarify words or phrases the children don't understand, and we come up with a short prose summary of the poem.

3) We listen to the poem being read by someone else (our absolute favorite, btw, is Tom Hiddleston [better known as Loki] reading Sonnet 18, Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?, on YouTube) to get an idea of pronunciation, cadence, and rhythm. Sometimes we watch a short dramatization (often we can find these on YouTube).

4) We recite together in the beginning.

 

When the kids were young, we would work on two lines a day. Eventually we increased it to four. After 8 years of memorizing poetry, the kids can easily memorize 15-20 lines a day if we spend about 20 minutes working on them. We memorized The Cremation of Sam McGee in a week.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...