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Rhyme Overload

Taking rhyme to an extreme, children collect as many words with the same rhyme as they can. They can brainstorm in groups, or use a rhyming dictionary. The writing task is to construct a nonsense poem using only the chosen rhyme.

Here are some likely rhymes to get you started: 'ease', 'newt', 'choose', 'bear', 'hat', 'nose', 'pet'. Working on their own, or in pairs, children will create different poems from the same collection of words.

              Poems don't have to rhyme

 

Way up in the trees
In the high Pyrenees
Some young chimpanzees
Were sitting at ease
With the birds and the bees
On their favourite trapeze
Eating their teas
Of peaches and peas
In the cool summer breeze
When their mother said, "Please
Don't do a striptease
Or sneeze on the cheese
It encourages fleas
To squeeze your knees
Then you'll catch a disease
With a cough and a wheeze
Like the mumps or the meas(les)"

"Oh she's just a big tease
said the apes and mon-keys"

And now I sees
(With great expertise)
That's enough about these
Make-believe chimpanzees;

            And I'm sure you agrees!         MJ

More poems

It would be very boring to read a whole collection of poems like that. But, as a fun exercise, it's OK once in a while.

A word about 'nonsense' poems. When I visit schools, I'm at pains to tell children that 'nonsense' doesn't equal 'rubbish'. A nonsense poem can still be (must be) well-written, well-crafted. In fact, it's a shame about the word 'nonsense' really, because a good nonsense poem makes perfect sense within its own world, just as talking mice and flying snowmen make perfect sense in cartoons.

See: Volume 4 'Language and Performance', Chapter 2 'Sense and Nonsense'

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