Our Homeschool: Poetry in 2013-2014

I've been thinking about poetry recently, as we continue to enjoy our weekly poetry readings so very much and realized I never posted our poetry for last year (fourth grade, first grade, prekindergarten, and trouble-maker). We read poetry once a week and that's all. We just read it and look at any illustrations there might be. Sometimes the kids enjoy a poem and sometimes they don't. That's fine. I try to choose poems and collections I think they might enjoy or appreciate and always with illustrations. During Advent and Christmas, we read seasonal poetry, but that's another post. (We also memorize poetry, but that happens during our memory work time. You can read more about it in this post.)

The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning. A few lines of this poem are in one of the Writing with Ease books and fascinated my children (Level 3, maybe?) so I searched through all the options at the library to find the one with the illustrations I liked best and selected this one with illustrations by Kate Greenway. I'm always pleased when I can share a famous poem or poet with the children in a stand-alone book rather than a poetry collection.

Shakespeare's Seasons ed by Miriam Weiner and illustrated by Sharon Whitt is a delighful collection of snippets of Shakespeare wonderfully illustrated. I chose this to entice my children with some lovely Shakespearean lines as we were just beginning our study of Shakespeare. I think they liked the illustrations more than the poetry, but I intend to request it again after they've come to know the Bard a bit better.

Something Rich and Strange A Treasury of Shakespeare's Verse compiled by Gina Pollinger is one of my favorite collections of Shakespeare for children (in my admittedly limited experience). I still request it every few months. This is a full book, so we went through about ten pages a week for a few months. Even going slowly, I did not read every page but chose a few as we went along.


This Big Sky by Pat Mora with illustrations by Steve Jenkins is a book of poetry of the American southwest. We enjoyed it and I think it would be a fantastic selection for anyone who lives in the southwest or wants to share it with their children. I personally love the illustrations by Jenkins, too. Perhaps someone would like to write a small book of Kansas poems for him to illustrate?


Animal Poems by Valerie Worth also illustrated by Steve Jenkins delighted the children. They loved the poems and the illustrations. With that porcupine on the cover, how can you resist?

A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Children selected by Caroline Kennedy, illustrated by Jon J. Muth. I love everything about this book. I love the selection of poems and the illustrations. We didn't finish this book before the end of the school year, so we read more from it in 2014-2015.

The links above are affiliate links at Amazon and I receive a small commission if you make a purchase. I received nothing in exchange for this review. We checked out copies of all of these books at our library.