Keep kids reading over half term!

Hello, teachers and parents!

If you're keen to keep your youngsters reading over half term, how about showing them the easy-read rhymes and poems on my For kids page? You could then have some family or classroom fun trying some of your own, following similar structures.

For more of my poems, please see my other site: poemsforfun.wordpress.com .

Half term is a wonderful thing, in theory, but not always in practice, when everything needs doing in house and garden, the relatives are expecting visits, the accounts need sorting, and clothes for the coming season need buying... and the kids are bored. Dead bored, from the afternoon of Day One.

"Go and read a book!" you could try, but will they?

"Go and write one, then!" you could nag, but ditto.

Oh, the lure of rhymes!

This is where the magic of a poem comes in. Poems can be short - tiny even - and fun and exciting and mind-opening, and the words can seem like bright little counters on a board, moving in their clever little patterns and shapes, while the rhythms give fidgety limbs something to fidget to!

Get your kids rhyming!

Start them on a rhyme sequence of their own, and you won't be able to shut them up.

Try: "What rhymes with Go?" as your fed up nine-year-old follows you round kitchen, garage or garden path, tugging on your arm and whining in your ear.

Or try: "How many words rhyme with Tree?"

Put them in poetic charge!
Prompt and hint, nudge and spur, as you work away at those chores, or put your feet up and close your eyes, but don't do the work for them: let them do it, and let them amaze and astonish you too, every time!

Time for pen and paper!

Now send them off to write it all down, ready to read out to the proud, enchanted grandparents, the teacher, head teacher, whole school, or to your friends when they land on you at the weekend. And the dog and cat? Well, worth a try.

And don't forget to call after your child as he or her rushes off, fired-up to sizzling point: "You're a real poet, you are!"  After all, it's true: kids are natural poets. Well, that's my opinion anyway.

Happy half term, this week or next or whenever!