These are a couple of creatively silly Humpty Dumpty alternative poems that are firm favourites with the children in my Fun With Poetry assemblies. There is a token gesture of hyperbole used as humour, but otherwise they are just funny poems!
Humpty Dumpty sat on my knee
Humpty Dumpty had a great wee
All down my leg and all over the floor
Till Humpty was empty and couldn’t do more.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Laughed out loud and said “Do it again!”
The first silly poem never fails to surprise children with the concept that poetry can have a childish mischief to it, and invariably ends up with a playground full of alternatives for Humpty’s Day from that point on!
The second poem is such a simple, tiny amendment that it tends to inspire the smallest of children to have a go at ‘tweaking’ the words for themselves. I actually tend to recite this poem first, without warning that I have amended it from the original, and see the reaction when they realise that the ending isn’t what they expected! When they recognise that the ending can be altered without making the poem ‘wrong’ I then proceed with “Humpty Dumpty sat on my knee, Humpty Dumpty had a great………” : no-one has ever failed to guess the word yet, and it shows how easy it is to change the basics of a poem in this way when you have an idea of how to start. From that point, putting Humpty in different situations and finding appropriate rhyming words is all that’s needed:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a horse
………………………………….(course, gorse (these are prickly bushes), force)
Notice here that if you use a word like horse, the options for rhyming words might restrict your ideas for the next line. If so, try a different word, eg: pig = dig, wig, gig, twig until you find one with options that inspire you (Use www.rhymezone.com if you don’t have a rhyming dictionary and it will give you lots of rhyming options for every word.)
You don’t need to stick at just altering what Humpty’s sat on: maybe you could change what he’s doing completely, and still keep the same rhyme and rhythm pattern, like this
Humpty Dumpty went to the zoo
………………………………….(poo, loo, too, two, new, grew, flew, blue, clue, knew, queue, true etc)
Just have a play around and you’ll get the idea soon enough.
My Humpty Dumpty Poems are just a couple of the alternative nursery rhymes included in my book “The Good, The Mad and the Ugly: A Collection of Angela’s Poems” RRP £5.99
If you would like to have a go at writing your own ALTERNATIVE NURSERY RHYMES, click here for a page of more teaching on how to start, or click here for the lyrics of some TRADITIONAL NURSERY RHYMES to base yours on.
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