Welcome to Poetry4kids. I’m Kenn Nesbitt.

A publisher recently asked me to write a fun poem for first graders that would help build phonemic awareness—the ability to hear, recognize, and play with sounds in words. They wanted something that would show how syllables and sounds can be changed, moved around, and combined in new ways. I had a great time coming up with silly word mashups and actually wrote several different poems for them.

In the end, the publisher chose to publish one of the other poems I wrote, but I liked this one so much that I decided to share it on my website for kids to enjoy. After all, playing with words is one of the best ways to learn how they work! What kind of fun, mixed-up words can you come up with? This is…

Random Andy

Random Andy makes up things

He also made some candypants.

He made a monkeytoothbrush

— Kenn Nesbitt