Five fun poetry exercises to try with your kids

Looking for a fun way to introduce poetry in your homeschool?  Want to sneak spelling, penmanship, vocabulary, antonyms and parts of speech into the play?  Here's some poetry exercises that will fit the bill.

1. Revised rhymes:  Get out a book of nursery rhymes or short poems (try e.e. cummings or Emily Dickinson) and have your child copy three of them down.  Now tell your child to cross out as many words as possible and replace them with synonyms (words with the same meaning) or antonyms (opposites).  Then read the revised poem out loud.
2. Pot luck poems:  Have your children write out lots of words and phrases on slips of paper.  Ask them to do noun phrases (such as "a giant duck") and verb phrases (such as "running wildly"), along with adjectives (describing words like green and crazy), adverbs (describing words for verbs like angrily), conjunctions (and, but...)  and articles (a, an, the).  Aim for lots of them!  Then put all the slips of paper in a bag, box or hat and start pulling them out.  Try to arrange them into a poem and tinker with them until it feels right.  Write out the finished poems and then scramble the papers and try again.
3. Point of view poems:  Ask your child to write a poem from the point of view of something else in the room (a cat, a lamp, a potted plant...).  The poem can be in free verse (meaning there is no rhyme or structure needed), with just a few words per line, broken up in whatever odd ways your child likes.  Ask your child to aim for a long poem of very short lines, and then read it aloud.
4. Snow haikus:  Take advantage of Minnesota's winter weather right now and ask your child to write a haiku (a three line poem with 5 syllables on the first line, 7 on the second, and 5 on the last) about snow or winter and then use a stick to write it out in the snow in the back yard.  (In warmer times or places, you can do a sand haiku with the same principles.)
5. Found poems:  Give your children old magazines, newspapers or ruined books and a highlighter.  Have them highlight words and phrases that seem like they'd make a fun or interesting poem, and then write the poem out in fancy lettering on a piece of paper.  Even toddlers and preschoolers can get into the fun with this one, randomly highlighting things that you can read to the kids in your finest poetry reading voice once enough are highlighted (often for a lot of giggles).

If you like, give each child a blank journal or notebook to record the poems.  Have fun!