
Poem of the Week can be a great springboard to a million activities in the classroom and to your lessons. Ok, maybe not a million…but close.
Incorporating a “Poem of the Week” into kindergarten classrooms can be a fun and effective way to foster language development, creativity, and a lifelong love for literature in young learners.
Using a “Poem of the Week” in kindergarten can offer numerous benefits for young learners, fostering their language skills, creativity, and emotional development.
10 BENEFITS for poem of the week

1. Language Development: Poems expose children to rich vocabulary, rhythmic patterns, and varied sentence structures, enhancing their language skills and comprehension.
2. Phonemic Awareness: Listening to and reciting poems helps children recognize and manipulate sounds in words, which is a crucial foundation for reading and writing.
Word patterns can highlighted in the poems. In the poem “Leaves,” students are engaging with long e sounds represented by ee and ea.
3. Rhythm and Rhyme: Poems often feature rhythmic patterns and rhymes, helping children develop an ear for sounds and the ability to distinguish between them.
Sometimes using familiar rhythms like “Humpty Dumpty” or “The Wheels on the Bus” activates former processors in the brain for new information.
4. Critical Thinking: Analyzing the meaning and themes of poems promotes critical thinking skills, as children learn to interpret and make connections between different elements.
Learning about content standards in the world of rhyme, makes more viable connections to understanding.
5. Cognitive Development: Engaging with poems enhances cognitive skills such as pattern recognition, sequencing, and understanding cause-and-effect relationships.
Even a quick poem like Our World has a cause-and-effect statement of conserving resources leads to having a better world.
6. Vocabulary: Using content-specific vocabulary in weekly poems makes acquiring new vocabulary not only doable, but fun.
Kindergarten students need to know about push and pull, but putting these words in the context of a sled make the word real.
Students can even act out this poem even if they don’t live in an area with snow and sleds.
The poem “Winter Fun” also includes opposites up and down making a clearer connection.
7. Memory Skills: Repeating and memorizing poems helps improve memory retention, a skill that can be beneficial for learning various subjects.
Adding music to the lyrics of the poem is even better.
8. Creativity: Connecting the arts to content is a great way to allow students to be creative.
Poem of the Week sets always have an art connection with a weekly “craftivity.”
In addition, many activities (Read, Write, Glue, Draw and Line Order Activities) ask for student illustrations.
When a student can illustrate a poem, they are demonstrating understanding AND expressing themselves artistically!
Art lessons also include fine motor skills, like tracing, cutting, and glueing…not to mention the kinesthetic nature of one-to-one match.
9. Parental Involvement: Sharing the “Poem of the Week” with parents encourages family engagement in a child’s learning journey, strengthening the home-school connection.
My students knew the Poem of the Week this week, would be the homework for next week. They expected it. AND so did the parents.
This allows the parents to help with reading fluency AND get excited about their child “actually” reading lines of text.
10. Long-Term Love for Literature: By introducing young learners to the joys of poetry, you’re laying the foundation for a lifelong appreciation for literature and the arts.
Successfully learning and reciting a poem can boost children’s self-confidence and provide a sense of achievement.
Exposure to different types of literature, including poetry, sets the foundation for later literacy skills. It fosters a love for reading and writing, making the learning process enjoyable and engaging.
Additionally, the “Poem of the Week” approach can make learning engaging and enjoyable, creating a positive association with language and literature. It can also serve as a starting point for various cross-curricular activities, such as art projects, discussions, and writing exercises, enhancing overall learning experiences.
Remember to choose poems that are age-appropriate, relatable, and enjoyable for kindergarteners. Consider their interests, experiences, and developmental levels to maximize the benefits of this approach.
POEM OF THE WEEK FOR FREE!
That’s right. Check out the Poem of the Week routine and activities for FREE! Once you see the value, you’ll want the whole year! It’s already done for you!