The Magic Box: Poems For Children

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Whether it’s a poem of laughter or lament, Kit always reads with perfect rhythm and pace. Listen out in ‘Heads or Tails’, for his keen sense of comic timing. There are plenty of jokes and things to smile about. In Kit’s books you’ll meet a cast of crazy characters, including the dreadful Dave Dirt. And like Dave, the poems are never afraid of a bit of slobber or snot. He includes some of his better known pieces e.g. Hot Dog, Great Snakes and Rabbiting On, all of which are fun, well written examples of poetry for young children to engage with. It leads the learners through each verse and encourages them to appreciate the rich language of the poet. A web link is provided for learners to see and hear the original poet perform the poem. The initial written task is to compose 3 verses based on the model - learners concentrate on feelings, creatures, the natural world - What would they put in their box?

My favourite poem was “The Magic Box” the book is named after. This is a imaginative abstract that describes a variety of beautiful, strange and wonderful things the narrator would put into their magic box. This would be a very effective at stimulating pupils’ imagination, and would be a good compliment to an English or Art lesson as you could get the children to describe what they would put in their magic box or get them to draw a picture of the magic box and all the wonderful things that were inside. The Magic Box’ is probably Kit Wright’s best known poem. Just like the magic box, his poetry contains an extraordinary collection of contrasts. The imaginative poem ‘The Magic Box’ by Kit Weight provides a wonderful opportunity to appreciate, perform and compose a fantasy poem. These resources are presented beautifully to also evoke an individual written response from the learners. I have looked at three poems from Kit Wright to explore his style: 'The Sea in the Trees, Watch your French', Heads or Tails Additional tip : Print off nets of cubes and cuboids ( photocopiable card ) and ask children to decorate their magic boxes then assemble them.

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I have provided opportunities for children to work with their talking partners to support their composition.

The Magic Box is Wright’s best-known poem for children. It is often read in schools, and Wright himself often does readings of the poem. His poems for children are much beloved, by turns comic, silly, sad, and magical.

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The Poem “Sea in the Trees” describes an old man sitting in the shade of a large ash tree, dreaming of the sea. I enjoyed reading this poem because of its strong connection to nature making it very soothing and relaxing. There are some good uses of rhyme with ‘made’ and ‘shade’, and ‘tree’ and ‘sea’. The poem very cleverly links the tree to the sea, harbor and a ship through various literary devices such as imagery and personification. This poem is suitable for KS2, not so much KS1. Children could be asked try and identify any literary devices, they can perform the poem themselves or make their own poem based on the main theme from Wright’s poem. Rhyming words can be analyzed, words that may be unknown could be explored. Children can review the poem saying why they liked it or not. The meaning of the poem: what the poet is trying to do, can be explored. Kit’s other poem ‘Watch Your French’ is very amusing and I am sure children would love it. The structure of the poem is clever starting with the narrator’s mother pouring fat on her foot and the using direct speech saying what she didn’t say in quite a sarcastic manner. Children could explore using speech marks in their poem and look at the position of the author and how that impacts the poem. Children could think of similar incidents and attempt to make their own poems with humor. This poem could be used for KS1 and early KS2 as the language is less complicated. The poem could be read as a whole class focusing on syllables or expression.