It's National Poetry Month!

Raise awareness and appreciation for poetry this April with your children.

Photo by Allie Smith on Unsplash

Poetry is an amazing art form that many individuals have used to express themselves. Using words to describe how we feel at certain moments, or to describe our thoughts on specific topics, can help us gain greater self-awareness.
 
Help introduce this art form to children by reading or writing it. You can use our library resources, such as TumbleBooks, to find children’s poetry books that they can read along with.

How to use TumbleBooks to find poetry books for kids:

1. Go to the Children's page on our website: https://www.basaltlibrary.org/kids
2. Click on the TumbleBooks link
3. Click on TumbleSearch, located in the upper right hand corner
4. Under ‘Search by Subject,’ type in "poetry" and click "Go" for a list of poetry picture books
5. If you see a book you like, click "Play Video" to have the book read aloud to your child!

 
If you would like more reading options, download the Overdrive app where you can look for more poetry eBook options for all ages using your library card.
 
 
As spring is also here, we have provided a spring poetry activity below!

Write an acrostic poem together using the word SPRING

But first, what are acrostic poems?

An acrostic poem uses the letters in a word to begin each line of the poem. Each line of the poem also relates to or describes the main topic word (International Literacy Association).
 
For this simple project, all you need is a piece of paper and some colorful markers!
Have your child write "SPRING" vertically on their paper and then write a sentence describing or talking about the season. We used markers to make it more colorful to fit our theme of SPRING. Feel free to draw a picture anywhere on your page!

Check out these fun acrostic poems our staff member Evelyn and her siblings wrote! If you would like to share your acrostic poem with us, post a picture of it on Instagram and tag @basalt_library or email a photo of your acrostic poem to info@basaltlibrary.org with the subject "Acrostic Poem Project". We would love to see what you write.

​Happy Spring!