Animal Antics
Poems about animals and pets, both real and imaginary.
Food Follies
Poems about food, glorious food!
Friends and Family Fun
Poems about funny families and friends and all of the crazy things they do.
Fractured Fairy Tales
Modern versions of classic fairy tales and Mother Goose rhymes.
Holiday Happenings
Poems about holidays and vacation, including Christmas, birthdays, etc.
Kooky Characters
Funny poems about funny people.
Loony Love
Fun and silly love poems.
Monster Mania
Funny poems about monsters, mythological beasts, and supernatural creatures.
School Foolery
Poems about the silly things that happen at school.
Science Silliness
Poems about science and technology, both real and fictional.
Seasonal Snickers
Funny poems about summer, winter, spring, and fall.
Musical Madness
Poems about music and wacky new lyrics to well-known songs.
Super Silly Songs
All-new lyrics to well-known songs.
Sports Snorts
Poems about sports of all sorts.
Very, Very Imaginary
Imaginative poems about imaginary things.
Wacky Weirdness
Poems of strange people and places, impossible happenings, and indescribable nonsense.
Wild Wordplay
Tongue twisters, fun puns, nonsense verse, and other weird, warped and wonderful wordplay.
Type any word here to find all the words that rhyme with it
A Winter Poem
Super Teacher Worksheets has lots of printable worksheets for the winter season. This Snowy School Day peom is located in the reading comprehension section on our Winter Worksheets page. Choose from poems, a fiction story, learning about the winter months or polar bears in this section. We also have many winter story pictures for students to practice their creative writing skills.
Visit our Winter Worksheets page to view the entire collection for all subjects.
Reading poems with your child
You can read poetry anywhere – all you need is your imagination to enjoy a poem. But if you can get outside and read nature poems for kids in nature, it will add a wonderful extra dimension that will help your child connect the words of the poem with the natural world around them and see nature in a new light.
If you don't have a garden or can't get outdoors then sitting by a window is also good. You can also match the poem to the season or weather. Reading a poem for kids about rain is perfect on a rainy day!
How to read a poem aloud
When you read each poem aloud, speak slowly and pause at the punctuation, rather than at the end of each line.
What to notice when reading a poem
Encourage your child to pay attention to what they notice when you read each of the following poems for kids.
Talk about using language as art.
• What images does a poem conjure up?
• Does the poem remind your child of anything?
• How do they feel when they listen to the poem?
• Did they find anything exciting or surprising in the language of the poem?
• Did they notice any unusual sounds?
• Can they identify any rhyming words?
• Were there any words they didn't understand?
• Is there a message in the poem?
• What do they think inspired the poet?
Read the poem more than once. Did your child notice anything new with each reading?
Talk about the themes in the poems and discuss how we can take better care of nature.
Follow your child's curiosity – do some research into the topics that interest them – and encourage them to write their own nature poems for kids!
I'm Glad the Sky is Painted Blue
I'm glad the sky is painted blue,
And the earth is painted green,
With such a lot of nice fresh air
All sandwiched in between.
The Crocus
Walter Crane
The golden crocus reaches up
to catch a sunbeam in her cup.
The Secret Song
Margaret Wise Brown
Who saw the petals
drop from the rose?
I, said the spider,
But nobody knows.
Who saw the sunset
flash on a bird?
I, said the fish,
But nobody heard.
Who saw the fog
come over the sea?
I, said the sea pigeon,
Only me.
Who saw the first
green light of the sun?
I, said the night owl,
The only one.
Who saw the moss
creep over the stone?
I, said the gray fox,
All alone.
Trees
Sara Coleridge
The Oak is called the King of trees,
The Aspen quivers in the breeze,
The Poplar grows up straight and tall,
The Peach tree spreads along the wall,
The Sycamore gives pleasant shade,
The Willow droops in watery Glade,
The Fir tree useful timber gives,
The Beech amid the forest lives.
The Wind
James Reeves
I can get through a doorway without any key,
And strip the leaves from the great oak tree.
I can drive storm-clouds and shake tall towers,
Or steal through a garden and not wake the flowers.
Seas I can move and ships I can sink;
I can carry a house-top or the scent of a pink.
When I am angry I can rave and riot;
And when I am spent, I lie quiet as quiet.
The Ferns
Gene Baro
High, high in the branches
the seawinds plunge and roar.
A storm is moving westward,
but here on the forest floor,
the ferns have captured stillness.
A green sea growth they are.
The ferns lie underwater
In a light of the forest’s green.
Their motion is like stillness,
As if water shifts between
And a great storm quivers
Through fathoms of green.
Mud
Polly Chase Boyden
Mud is very nice to feel
All squishy-squash between the toes!
I’d rather wade in wiggly mud
Than smell a yellow rose.
Nobody else but the rosebush knows
How nice mud feels
Between the toes.
Until I Saw the Sea
Lilian Moore
Until I saw the sea
I did not know
that wind
could wrinkle water so.
I never knew
that sun
could splinter a whole sea of blue.
Nor
did I know before,
a sea breathes in and out
upon a shore.
The Rain Has Silver Sandals
May Justus
The rain has silver sandals
For dancing in the spring,
And shoes with golden tassels
For summer's frolicking.
Her winter boots have hobnails
Of ice from heel to toe,
Which now and then she changes
For moccasins of snow.
First Snow
Marie Louise Allen
Snow makes whiteness where it falls.
The bushes look like popcorn-balls.
And places where I always play,
Look like somewhere else today.
Beyond Winter
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Over the winter glaciers
I see the summer glow,
And through the wild-piled snowdrift
The warm rosebuds below.
Maytime Magic
Mabel Watts
A little seed
For me to sow…
A little earth
To make it grow…
A little hole,
A little pat…
A little wish,
And that is that.
A little sun,
A little shower…
A little while,
And then – a flower!
Hurt no living thing
Christina Rossetti
Hurt no living thing:
Ladybird, nor butterfly,
Nor moth with dusty wing,
Nor cricket chirping cheerily,
Nor grasshopper so light of leap,
Nor dancing gnat, nor beetle fat,
Nor harmless worms that creep.
Green Stems
Margaret Wise Brown
Little things that crawl and creep
In the green grass forests,
Deep in their long-stemmed world
Where ferns uncurl
To a greener world
Beneath the leaves above them;
And every flower upon its stem
Blows above them there
The bottom of a geranium,
The back side of a trillium,
The belly of a bumblebee
Is all they see, these little things
Down so low
Where no bird sings
Where no wind blows,
Deep in their long-stemmed world.
A Dragonfly
Eleanor Farjeon
When the heat of the summer
Made drowsy the land,
A dragon-fly came
And sat on my hand,
With its blue jointed body,
And wings like spun glass,
It lit on my fingers
As though they were grass.
Fireflies in the Garden
Robert Frost
Here come real stars to fill the upper skies,
And here on earth come emulating flies,
That though they never equal stars in size,
(And they were never really stars at heart)
Achieve at times a very star-like start.
Only, of course, they can't sustain the part.
A Wee Little Worm
James Whitcomb Riley
A wee little worm in a Hickory nut
Sang, happy as he could be,
“O I live in the heart of the whole round world,
And it all belongs to me!”
Fishes' Evening Song
Dahlov Ipcar
Flip flop,
Flip flap,
Slip slap,
Lip lap;
Water sounds,
Soothing sounds.
We fan our fins
As we lie
Resting here
Eye to eye.
Water falls
Drop by drop,
Plip plop,
Drip drop.
Slash splish;
Fish fins fan,
Fish tails swish,
Swush, swash, swish.
This we wish …
Water cold,
Water clear,
Water smooth,
Just to soothe
Sleepy fish.
The Sandpiper
Frances Frost
At the edge of tide
He stops to wonder,
Races through
The lace of thunder.
On toothpick legs
Swift and brittle,
He runs and pipes
And his voice is little.
But small or not,
He has a notion
To outshout
The Atlantic Ocean.
The Eagle
Alfred Tennyson
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
When You Are Old
William Butler Yeats
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
Tobias Menzies reads 'When You Are Old' in our exclusive video:
This Is Just To Say
William Carlos Williams
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Watch Helena Bonham Carter read 'This Is Just To Say':
Fall, Leaves, Fall
Emily Brontë
Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night’s decay
Ushers in a drearier day.
John Clare
I love the fitfull gusts that shakes
The casement all the day
And from the mossy elm tree takes
The faded leaf away
Twirling it by the window-pane
With thousand others down the lane
I love to see the shaking twig
Dance till the shut of eve
The sparrow on the cottage rig
Whose chirp would make believe
That spring was just now flirting by
In summers lap with flowers to lie
I love to see the cottage smoke
Curl upwards through the naked trees
The pigeons nestled round the coat
On dull November days like these
The cock upon the dung-hill crowing
The mill sails on the heath a-going
The feather from the ravens breast
Falls on the stubble lea
The acorns near the old crows nest
Fall pattering down the tree
The grunting pigs that wait for all
Scramble and hurry where they fall
Whim Wood
Katherine Towers
into the coppery halls
of beech and intricate oak
to be close to the trees
as they whisper together
let fall their leaves,
and we die for the winter
To Autumn
John Keats
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
Japanese Maple
Clive James
Your death, near now, is of an easy sort.
So slow a fading out brings no real pain.
Breath growing short
Is just uncomfortable. You feel the drain
Of energy, but thought and sight remain:
Enhanced, in fact. When did you ever see
So much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls
On that small tree
And saturates your brick back garden walls,
So many Amber Rooms and mirror halls?
Ever more lavish as the dusk descends
This glistening illuminates the air.
It never ends.
Whenever the rain comes it will be there,
Beyond my time, but now I take my share.
My daughter’s choice, the maple tree is new.
Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame.
What I must do
Is live to see that. That will end the game
For me, though life continues all the same:
Filling the double doors to bathe my eyes,
A final flood of colours will live on
As my mind dies,
Burned by my vision of a world that shone
So brightly at the last, and then was gone.
Sonnet 73 (‘That time of year thou mayst in me behold’)
William Shakespeare
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum’d by that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv’st which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
Plums
Gillian Clarke
When their time comes they fall
without wind, without rain.
They seep through the trees’ muslin
in a slow fermentation.
Daily the low sun warms them
in a late love that is sweeter
than summer. In bed at night
we hear heartbeat of fruitfall.
The secretive slugs crawl home
to the burst honeys, are found
in the morning mouth on mouth,
inseparable.
We spread patchwork counterpanes
for a clean catch. Baskets fill,
never before such harvest,
such a hunters’ moon burning
the hawthorns, drunk on syrups
that are richer by night
when spiders pitch
tents in the wet grass.
This morning the red sun
is opening like a rose
on our white wall, prints there
the fishbone shadow of a fern.
The early blackbirds fly
guilty from a dawn haul
of fallen fruit. We too
breakfast on sweetnesses.
Soon plum trees will be bone,
grown delicate with frost’s
formalities. Their black
angles will tear the snow.
Autumn Fires
Robert Louis Stevenson
In the other gardens
And all up in the vale,
From the autumn bonfires
See the smoke trail!
Pleasant summer over,
And all the summer flowers,
The red fire blazes,
The grey smoke towers.
Sing a song of seasons!
Something bright in all!
Flowers in the summer,
Fires in the fall!
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Pleasant Sounds
John Clare
The rustling of leaves under the feet in woods and under
hedges;
The crumpling of cat-ice and snow down wood-rides,
narrow lanes and every street causeway;
Rustling through a wood or rather rushing, while the wind
halloos in the oak-toop like thunder;
The rustle of birds' wings startled from their nests or flying
unseen into the bushes;
The whizzing of larger birds overhead in a wood, such as
crows, puddocks, buzzards;
The trample of robins and woodlarks on the brown leaves.
and the patter of squirrels on the green moss;
The fall of an acorn on the ground, the pattering of nuts on
the hazel branches as they fall from ripeness;
The flirt of the groundlark's wing from the stubbles –
how sweet such pictures on dewy mornings, when the
dew flashes from its brown feathers.
In this episode of Book Break, Emma recommends the best books to cosy up with this autumn:
This collection is part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library, and is divided into spring, summer, autumn and winter. From W. B. Yeats to Andrew Marvell, nature has inspired some of the loveliest poetry ever written.
Perfect for reading aloud and sharing with all the family, this is a magnificent collection of 366 poems compiled by Allie Esiri, one for every night of the year. It contains a full spectrum of poetry from familiar favourites to exciting contemporary voices. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, W. B. Yeats, A. A. Milne and Christina Rossetti sit alongside Roger McGough, Carol Ann Duffy and Benjamin Zephaniah.
Former National Poet of Wales, Clarke is one of the best-known names in UK poetry today, as well as one of the most popular poets on the school curriculum.
Over the past four decades her work has examined nature, womanhood, art, music, Welsh history – and always with the lyric and imagistic precision by which her poetry is instantly recognisable. Perhaps her greatest inspiration is the Welsh landscape and all the human stories that it hosts: as UK Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy has said, 'Gillian Clarke's outer and inner landscapes are the sources from which her poetry draws its strengths'.
Katharine Towers' second collection explores the fragility of our relationship with the natural world. The Remedies is a lyric, unforgettable collection which shows Towers emerging as a major poetic talent
Again and again, James reminds us that he is not only a poet of effortless wit and lyric accomplishment: he is also an immensely wise one, who delights in using poetic form to bring a razor-sharp focus to his thought. Miraculously, these poems see James writing with his insight and energy not only undiminished but positively charged by his situation: Sentenced to Life represents a career high point from one of the greatest literary intelligences of the age.
Whether you’re feeling tempted, seduced, tormented, or rejected, or falling in love, or out of love – this is the perfect book to inspire, console, and give a voice to every facet of our deepest and most complex human emotion.