Most Famous Rhyming Poems For Kids

Rhyming poems for kids are one of the best ways to introduce and nurture their love for reading and learning. Rhymes are the repetition of similar-sounding words. When employed in a well-written poem, they combine styles and feelings to create a lyrical rhythm, making it easier for children to pick up new words and their meanings. Thus, these poems double as educational tools that help children master language skills. In addition, children can distinguish different expressions leading to the attachment of emotions to the art and aesthetics of the poetry.

Rhyming poems combined with pictures and fingerplays create an exciting audio-visual experience for children. An anonymous kindergarten teacher and mother of four, going by the username dbsenk, shares a few tips that she used when she taught her students poems using fingerplay. She explains, “We all know that different children learn through a variety of styles, and you can present poems and fingerplays in different ways too… I love acting out poems and nursery rhymes – or having 5 children stand up and sit down one at a time with a countdown rhyme. I found the easiest way to keep most children engaged and participating with simple poems and rhymes is to include pictures. When you allow the children to hold and manipulate the pictures as you recite the poems you are incorporating auditory, visual, and kinesthetic styles, and the kids love it.

1. From A Railway Carriage, by Robert Louis Stevenson

Faster than fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging along like troops in a battle,
All through the meadows the horses and cattle:
All of the sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as driving rain;
And ever again, in the wink of an eye,
Painted stations whistle by.

Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,
All by himself and gathering brambles;
Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;
And there is the green for stringing the daisies!
Here is a cart run away in the road
Lumping along with man and load;
And here is a mill and there is a river:
Each a glimpse and gone for ever!

2. February, by Mary Ann Hoberman

February, funny word,
With my “r” that’s hardly heard,
Different in so many ways,
I’m the month with fewest days;
And another thing that’s strange is
I’m the only month that changes:
Every leap year – one in four –
I am given one day more,
Twenty-nine from twenty-eight
(Not so easy to keep straight).
Still it’s lots of fun to vary –
I like being February!