Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

Mike Smith:
Kathy, you advise starting poetry studies pretty early in a child’s education, is that right?

Kathy Weitz:
Yes, I believe you should start memorizing poetry with your children as soon as they can string sentences together. And then, add the elements of formal poetry study in their elementary and high school years.

Mike:
Where’s the best place to begin, Kathy? Can you recommend types of poems, or particular collections, that you've found to be good starting points?

Kathy:
Look to the enduring poetry—the classics of the nineteenth and twentieth century are a great place to start.

Every child should know Mother Goose-nursery rhymes. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Child’s Garden of Verses—wonderful for every age. No one should miss Lewis Carroll’s poetry: “Jabberwocky”—every child should memorize that. Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories. A great resource I’ve found is called Favorite Poems Old and New, and it has kind of a mish-mash of all kinds of great things that children love. There are psalms, hymns, sacred poetry. Poetry of American history. Older students should really study the Romantic and Victorian poets to understand philosophies that were instrumental in founding our country. Christian poets: John Donne, George Herbert. And of course the epic poems of Western civilization: the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, the Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, and others.

Mike:
Well, thank you, Kathy. That really points us in the right direction. And until next time, I’m Mike Smith.