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National Poetry Month: Great to Celebrate with Kids

April 22, 2015 by Adam Gertsacov

journal pen poetry National Poetry Month

I am a big fan of both poetry and children and now is the time to celebrate them both — April is National Poetry Month!

The Academy of American Poets first declared National Poetry Month in April 1996. Over the years, it has become the largest literary celebration in the world with schools, publishers, libraries, booksellers, and poets celebrating poetry’s vital place in our culture.

The Academy of American Poets’ website serves as a hub for information about local poetry events during the month, so be sure to check it out for local events you and the family can enjoy. The organization also provides free educational resources to teachers for classroom celebrations and activities, and commissions an annual festival poster with almost 150,000 copies distributed to schools, libraries, and community centers for free. In the past, these collectible posters have been designed by noted graphic designers such as Chip Kidd and Milton Glaser.

To help parents celebrate National Poetry Month with their little ones, I’ve compiled some excellent web resources for children’s poetry (reading and writing) below. Also here’s one of my favorite poems: Eating Poetry by Mark Strand. Strand passed away last year, but this poem of his lives on, and it is a great reminder of the joy of reading (and eating) poetry.

Eating Poetry Mark Strand national poetry month

Eating Poetry is one of the first poems I remember reading and completely loving. It makes several leaps of metaphor that just make perfect sense to me, and it has left me hungry for more poetry ever since.

If you’ve got other resources to add, leave them in the comments below.

Poems written mostly by adults:

  • Poetry Foundation poems for children
  • 62 Poems for Kids
  • Poets.org – Poems kids like
  • Writers Digest: The Best Poems for Kids

Poems written mostly by kids

  • Lori’s Webs: Young Poetsages 5 to 18
  • AndreaShavick.com: Young Poets page

How to write poems with kids

  • Kenn Nesbitt’s Poetry Writing Lessons for Kids
  • Judy Helton’s teaching poetry
A version of this first appeared Dadapalooza.

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Filed Under: education, entertainment, National Tagged With: books, fun, National Poetry Month, poetry, reading, tips

About Adam Gertsacov

Adam Gertsacov of our Chicago Dads Group is an actor, clown, director and full-time dad. In addition to blogging at Dadapalooza.com and Clownlink.com, he and his wife are the founders of the Digital Family Summit, a first-of-its-kind annual conference where teens, tweens and their parents connect to learn how to live as a family in the digital world.

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Comments

  1. Brian says

    April 23, 2015 at 3:14 pm

    Great article Adam!

    Reply

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