This is a wonderful collection of poems inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Rachel’s beautiful poem answers this question – ‘What is the use of a book,’ thought Alice ‘without pictures or conversation?’

And in man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is more beautiful than the most beautiful face. Learn a poem yourself and keep performing it to the class, encouraging them to join in when they can.

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If you are going to read a new poem to your child, be sure to run through it so you can read it aloud, without hesitation, and not ruin the experience for you both. I particularly like this book as it provides suggestions on how to perform the written pieces. An idea from this book could be used as a way of encouraging children to think of their own ways to perform a piece. This type of text really helps to build confidence in children and bring poetry to life. What can various sound devices tell us? In this poem, Kenyon captures the conflict between the comfort and the anxiety of death in startling ways. The reassuring pastoral imagery is often undermined by unusual vantage points and disturbing objects, as in the first lines, where sunlight is described from within a darkening barn, “moving / up the bales as the sun moves down.” Kenyon’s use of consonance—the repetition of consonant sounds—and assonance—the repetition of vowel sounds—brings a vivid physicality to the speaker’s conflict. We see this when the comforting flow of “Let the light of late afternoon” is suddenly obstructed by the tongue forming the word “chinks.” The sonic repetition in this poem also reveals the intricate phonemic—referring to the smallest distinct units of sound within words—relationships the poet has so skillfully knitted together through the dominant l and k sounds. This sonic tension, like the fear and relief the speaker finds in the idea of death, are brought to a close in the final line, “comfortless, so let evening come.” Finally, though line breaks are difficult to capture aloud, the strategic breaks, particularly in the last stanza, are well worth noting as readers explore ways in which this last line might be performed. Ahlberg has created a lovely simple structure to the poem which plays out as a dialogue between the whining child and the indifferent teacher- and we’ve all met that kid Derek Drew!!!

Some poems lend themselves to movement. A choral speaking performance might involve some gesture or other moves. Or, as an exercise, a group could work on a mimed version, or a set of freeze frames.

Funnily enough, I find it harder to write not in verse, though I feel I am now getting the hang of it! My novel THE GIANTS AND THE JONESES is going to be made into a film by the same team who made the Harry Potter movies, and I have written three books of stories about the anarchic PRINCESS MIRROR-BELLE who appears from the mirror and disrupts the life of an otherwise ordinary eight-year-old. I have just finished writing a novel for teenagers. Poem by Paul Stewart, illustration by Chris Riddell, taken from Chris Riddell's Poems to Save the World With. The above video may be from a third-party source. We accept no responsibility for any videos from third-party sources. Please let us know if the video is no longer working. The ones that I did annotate however, I adored! There is so much possible to do with them, from tongue twisters, to chants, to full blown acting opportunities. I found poems that would work for small groups (3/4), that they could stage themselves very easily from the imagery provided. And others that could use the whole class (around 32 lines to give out in the poems) that can either be handed over completely, or controlled by the teacher in the position of a narrator/conductor. Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what was expected of heaven or fear’d of hell, are now consumed,

The beauty of silly poems for kids is that they can stimulate different thought processes as well as dissolve your little ones into puddles of giggles. Make it fun. Don’t sit your child down and inform them they’re going to learn some poems. Instead, introduce them casually. The mountain peak theme also provides a symbolic message. Reaching the top of a mountain shows that you have achieved the hard-work of climbing to get there, symbolising that you can achieve anything when you put your mind to it.Use an expressive voice when you’re reading your child a poem. Different voices for characters, the appropriate emotions, raising your voice or lowering it where appropriate will all enhance the experience. Intentionally, I have not included the whole of the poems in this blog as some of them are fairly long. The whole versions are all easily found for free online. For older kids, have them choose a favorite song, and recite them as a poem. They’ll discover they already know plenty of poetry.