The Joys of Memorizing Poetry

Katie Fitzgerald reflects on the benefits of having children memorize poetry.

Family and friends who are connected with me on Facebook will occasionally be treated to a recorded performance of one of my five children reciting a poem. We started poetry memorization in our family when my oldest, now just about to turn thirteen, was less than three years old, and in the past decade, we have covered dozens of poems, from Robert Louis Stevenson and Robert Frost to Gerard Manley Hopkins and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

If you’ve ever wanted to celebrate poetry with your kids in this way, here are some tips based on my experience.

Cultivate Enjoyment of Poetry

My first piece of advice is to delight in poetry. Many of us have memories of English class lessons where we had to analyze each line of a poem in excruciating detail, and maybe that has left us feeling bewildered or like we just don’t “get” poetry. Push those memories aside as best you can, and don’t allow them to discourage your children. Rather, treat poems the way you treat any other art form. Just as you might not connect with every song on the radio or every painting in a museum, not every poem is going to speak to you or your child. Since the goal of poetry memorization is to cultivate an enjoyment and appreciation for poetry, your family is free to choose poems that appeal to you.

Poetry collections featuring a variety of poets are the best sources for discovering what you like. I especially recommend A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Children by Caroline Kennedy, The Random House Book of Poetry for Children by Jack Prelutsky, and The Harp and Laurel Wreath: Poetry and Dictation for the Classical Curriculum by Laura M. Berquist, Catholic homeschooling mom and founder of Mother of Divine Grace School.

Find Poems to Memorize

Once you have begun to identify poems that your children like, you can start thinking about selecting poems to memorize. For a child between the ages of three and five, you can start very small with poems as short as four to six lines. Some kids take to memorization very quickly and will want to start doing longer ones immediately, but if shorter poems are appealing for a while, that’s fine too.

For a child of any age who is brand-new to poetry, sometimes it also helps if the first couple of poems he or she memorizes are written in rhyme. I find that knowing that certain lines are supposed to rhyme helps with recall of the correct words. I would eventually recommend branching out to non-rhyming poems once the child has a couple of rhyming pieces under his or her belt.

Poems with distinctive rhythmic patterns also lend themselves well to memorization and recitation because of how pleasing they are to the ear. My 10-year-old daughter is currently working on learning “Paul Revere’s Ride” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, which has a wonderfully satisfying rhythm to each stanza. Even just hearing her practice is enjoyable.

Build a Culture Around Poetry

Memorization comes more naturally to some children than others, and not every child always likes it one hundred percent of the time, but you can find ways to make it feel more fun and exciting. I will often assign poems that are related to a child’s current interests, such as kittens for my currently 6-year-old daughter or the ocean for her twin brother. I also like to take inspiration from the seasons, choosing poems to suit various holidays and occasions. There are many lovely Easter and Christmas poems with Christian themes, and we enjoy preparing during Lent and Advent to recite poems for those holy days.

We also make the recitation of a newly memorized poem into something of an event. Often there is a prop or costume, and we always record the child reciting the poem on video. My kids all get a big kick out of looking back on the poems they recorded when they were younger, and younger siblings love to see the older kids’ renditions of the poems they are just learning. After a while, a family culture naturally develops around the reading, memorization, and reciting of poetry and it takes on a life of its own among the kids.

Fill Your Kids’ Minds with Beauty

There is so much our kids can fill their brains with. Beautiful words expertly strung together by the great poets are among the very best options. I asked my oldest daughter her thoughts about poetry memorization and she said two things: one, that she mostly likes poetry, even if she doesn’t read a lot of it; and two, that she enjoys rediscovering poems she has previously memorized and realizing she recognizes them. Becoming intimately familiar with a poem through memorization makes it personal, and that poem becomes a treasure your child can carry for the rest of his or her life.

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Copyright 2026 Katie Fitzgerald
Images: Canva