Techniques Of Reading Poetry With Young Children
For children, play is something that they always want to indulge in. On the contrary, work is something that they reflexively run away from. Poetry is somewhere between the two pursuits. To incline it towards the former is going to generate an interest in children to experience more of it. The adventure of language is in a league of its own. One can term it dry and ignore it and one can find a world of fascination in it. It all depends on the individual perception. As for children, once again it is highly dependent on how their adults present poetry before them. Nevertheless using techniques like rhyming or word games, one can unleash the literary intrigue if it exists in the child. If not, then there is no need to force the pursuit upon the little one.
Some literary geniuses are of the opinion that all children prior to their adolescent years are natural poets. And this is not an exaggeration. Giving encouragement to that latent desire to toy with words is not achieved in one single sitting or through one single way. There are multiple techniques to go about it. Firstly facilitating the experience is going to smooth things out for the initial phase. Children are not too fond of complications so the simpler it is, the more fun it is for them. Secondly involvement on a consistent basis with literary stimuli is quite helpful.
It can be a book reading experience or a poetry recitation adventure or a story telling session. Whatever it is, the child needs to visit the world of words more often. And this should not be just at home. Even at school, if the child is on the receiving end of fascinating games and stimulating spectacles related to poems, there is no reason why he/ she would not grow to enjoy and crave more of it. All in all, teaching poetry to children involves a lot of hard work and careful investment of consideration and empathy, which eventually nurtures that instinct of love for poetic art in the child.