Assalamo alaykum and welcome.
We have missed poetry teatime, alhamdulillah.
If you are not sure what poetry teatime is, it involves reading poetry aloud in your homeschool as part of a lifestyle in which children – and their adults! – are immersed in a rich linguistic and literary environment. To make it even better, it is typically accompanied by some sort of refreshments. A good place to start is this site or this video.
I don’t know about yours, but my kids seem to enjoy the eating part most of all; having said that, home baked goods are not a rarity around here, so there must be more to it…
What to read?
Because I didn’t have the time to research books, I opted for a “pick & mix” approach. Instead of going on amazon and splurge on books I know nothing about (at the risk of them finding much of the contents inappropriate according to our values), I decided to do a little online search instead and hand pick poems.
I tried to include a variety of styles; some classical (by which I loosely mean “old”) and some contemporary poems; some poet’s names you will recognise instantly, while a few were posted on a site by “regular” people (excuse my lack of a better term).
DISCLAIMER: I didn’t go into any depth about hidden meanings or the poets’ biographies, philosophies or outlooks on life. I just found poems I liked and collected them.
Is this a printable collection of poems?
No. The original idea was to share the complete collection as a ready to print booklet, but, to avoid breaching the copyright of some of the poems which do not belong to the public domain, I set it out as a little literary DIY task.
The booklet “A COLLECTION OF SUMMER POEMS TO READ ALOUD” is empty for you to fill.
What I am offering you is the chance to fill it using the exact list of poems I picked out for our Summer themed poetry teatime, insha’Allah. All the poems are freely accessible online so this will save you money and – if you also prefer to pick & mix your poems – a lot of time too!
I decorated the pages with little summery pictures one might want to colour in.
Below you will find the exact list on what I put in each page of our book, in case you want to reproduce the exact collection I put together for our homeschool. I linked the poems to websites where they are shared (to my knowledge) in a completely legal way, insha’Allah.
Assemble your collection
First of all, DOWNLOAD your FREE Summer Poem collection DIY pages here.
Here is the breakdown of what you can put in each page:
PAGE 1: Cover
PAGE 2 :
Bed in Summer – by Robert Louis Stevenson
Summer Dawn – by Spike Milligan
PAGE 3:
At the Seaside – by Robert Louis Stevenson
To See the Summer Sky – by Emily Dickinson
PAGE 4:
Midsummer, Tobago – by Derek Walcott
Early Summer Rain – by Yosa Buson
PAGE 5:
The Summer Sun Shone Round Me – by Robert Louis Stevenson
PAGE 6-7:
Birds in Summer – by Mary Howitt
PAGE 8:
Summer Stars – by Carl Sandburg
PAGE 9:
My Kingdom – by Robert Louis Stevenson
PAGE 10
Swaying in my Hammock – by Leanne Guenther
PAGE 11:
The Violet and the Bee – by John Bannister Tabb
Midsummer Joys – by Winifred Sackville Stoner Jr.
PAGE 12:
Summer Morning – by Rachel Field
We Have a Little Garden – by Beatrix Potter
PAGE 13:
The Schoolboy – by William Blake
PAGE 14
Summertime – by Brandon Tyler Martin
PAGE 15:
The Bird’s Bath – by Evaleen Stein
Baby’s Baking – by Evaleen Stein
PAGE 16:
The Summer of Stitches -by Raymond A. Foss
PAGE 17:
Barefoot Days – by Rachel Field
PAGE 18:
PAGE 19:
The Gardener – by Robert Louis Stevenson
PAGE 20:
Rain in Summer – by Henry W. Longfellow
PAGE 21:
The Brook Song – by James Whitcomb Riley
PAGE 22:
Summer Delight – by Paul Callus
Summer Sun – by Robert Louis Stevenson
How to use this list
With the list of poems above you and your children could:
- Use them for copywork in the printable booklet;
- Use them for dictation;
- Print them out and stick them on the pages;
You can also disregard my list, and choose your own poems to fill the printable pages, or have your children write their own!
Put the kettle on (by which I of course mean “switch on the espresso machine”), make some lemonade, sandwiches, muffins, fruit salad… or whatever you want; put your to-do list in a drawer and – whether it is a physical or metaphorical one – make sure it is shut!
Enjoy.
Homeschool tomorrow, insha’Allah.