Children's Verse

» Brunate - Involving Children with Poetry

My name is Josie Whitehead. I am a retired teacher, children's poet and also the grandmother of two toddlers. I have put about 350 of my own rhyming poems onto the internet at the request of local school children who love them. In addition I have added voice recordings to help children with reading. I have discovered that they are enjoyed all over the world and students of English as a second language find them useful for the same reason.

Please don't feel that there is competition between books and the internet. I, and many other people, especially children, have printed off my poems, added their own illustrations and their own favourite poems to their books. My poems go into many places, especially hospitals. You might like to do this also. If you Google my name you will discover poems for children of all ages and they are loved by adults also.

The fact that children can see rhyming words such as cough/off; through/blew/true and all the other words which sound alike and are spelt differently, is an excellent way to help them with their reading. In the world of teaching we were told that in skill-building, doing a particular thing a certain way three times is enough for that habit to stick. So the internet is a wonderful tool to use, not only to thrill children with rhyming stories but for them also to see and hear the words simultaneously. I have written a few poems for very small children, but for school age children in all the key stages, there is a wealth of poetry which will not only give them enjoyment of poems written with rhythm and rhyme, but will also take them into the effectiveness of blank verse, Petrarchan sonnets, haiku, ballads and other forms of poetry.

I do hope that readers of this website will enjoy the poems, and I am a modern grandmother for not only do I visit local schools and libraries, but I make Skype visits so that children can meet me in their school classrooms etc.

-- posted by Brunate

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