Early childhood educators can inspire children by reading creative writing and poems to them. Children can also write their own creative and expressive works of art.
Children are never to young for poetry. Even young babies benefit from hearing poems with interesting sounds, beats, rhymes, rhythms and language patterns. Poetry is a sensory experience.
Creative writing and poetry connects with storytelling, music, singing and dance.
EYLF learning outcomes
The Early Years Learning Framework asks children to:
- interact verbally and non-verbally with others for a range of purposes (5.1)
- engage with a range of texts and gain meaning from these texts (5.2)
- express ideas and make meaning using a range of media (5.3)
- begin to understand how symbols and pattern systems work (5.4)
- use imagination and creativity (4.1).
Learning experiences
Follow a formula
Some forms of poetry follow simple formulas (e.g. haiku, cinquain, quatrain and sonnet). However, they can still be too advanced for use in early childhood education.
Try inventing a formula for your children to follow. Ask them a series of questions and write each of their answers on a new line. Once complete, read the poem back to them.
Try this poetry format:
- What is the poem about?
- What sound or smell does it make?
- What does it look like?
- What does it do?
- Why do you like it?
An example poem:
My kitten
Meow meow
A hairy little ball
Sleeping on my bed
Long whiskers and a curly tail.
Learn new words
Show children a dictionary or a thesaurus and explain what it is for. Let children browse through the book and choose words that look interesting to them. Read the new word and its definition to the children.
Twist your tongue
Early childhood educators can introduce children to tongue twisters. The intention should be to inspire children to play silly games with words. It's okay if the children cannot say or understand them. Your children may even invent their own tongue twisters!
- She sells sea shells by the seashore.
- Six slippery snails slid slowly seaward.
- Red lorry, yellow lorry, red lorry, yellow lorry.
- Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear, Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair, Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't very fuzzy, was he?
- I wish to wish the wish you wish to wish, but if you wish the wish the witch wishes, I won't wish the wish you wish to wish.
Play word games
- Each child says an imaginary word. Try to be super silly and make other people laugh.
- Take turns saying words that describe sounds. It could be a real word like "honk" that describes a car horn. Or, it could be a made-up sound like "tatatatata" to describe rain on a roof. The term for words that sound like the thing they describe is Onomatopoeia.
- One child says a word. Other children think of rhyming words.
- One child says a word. Other children think of words that start with the same sound. Repeating consonant sounds at the beginning of a word is called alliteration (e.g. cooking cupcakes).
Resources
Videos
Victoria State Government: Phonological awareness through rhyme and stories