National Trust: I Am the Seed That Grew the Tree: A Nature Poem for Every Day of the Year (Poetry Collections)

Product Information

We’ll be talking about the book a lot over the coming months, and today we’re delighted to share an early preview – you can take a very first look inside the book below:

December – Red Sky at Night – I would use this poem to explore the English language, different cultures and explore old sayings that have been passed down throughout generations. The children could choose a topic and create their own sayings to go with them. This beautiful poetry anthology that includes a new nature poem for every day of the year is likely to become a primary classroom essential.

By Author / Illustrator

The winners of The Farshore Reading for Pleasure Teacher Awards 2023, highlighting the work schools are doing to encourage a love of reading, have... Poetry, even more so than short stories or novels, is a deeply personal thing. Therefore, it’s always a gamble to buy a book like this. I’m happy to have found that this was definitely „for me“ and I had great fun throughout the year. It sometimes made me cry (it was an emotional year) but usually cheered me up or emphasized my good mood. I like that the poem for my birthday is written by someone who's name looks similar to mine... Gene (Gén).

On first look at this book it could be used as a whole class or school resource to read aloud one poem a day within class or during assemblies. This would be a simple, short but consistent approach to exposing young children to different types of poetry and a broad range of authors. If this book was to be used within the classroom, I would use it either as mentioned above or to support the range of topics covered across the curriculum, particularly within English, science, geography and history.

Customer reviews

In een wereld die almaar sneller draait, waarin de natuur dag na dag meer kapot gaat en waarin er amper tijd is om adem te halen is dit boek een soort van medicijn, een vorm van therapie. Meditatie en bezinning in één. Koop dit boek, deel gedichten met je naasten en maak alvast jullie deeltje van deze gekke aarde mooier. This is a book I would definitely have in my classroom. I could see this being used as a nice, peaceful way to start the school day. I think it presents a lovely opportunity to bring the class together and create a ‘poetry environment’ and ultimately spark a child’s interest in poetry. The book captures the complexity and diversity of nature very well and as we move through it, we are made aware of the changing seasons and a variety of living things. I believe this poetry book could be used for a variety of topics/lessons, for example:

A real Hymn to nature.’ says Nosy Crow of this outstanding poetry anthology and I wholeheartedly agree. Stylish and distinctive but with real child appeal. A book to share, educate, entertain and to treasure.” Be that as it may, I knew some of the poems already, though of some we unfortunately only got abbreviated versions (for good reason though), while a lot were unknown to me. That’s a pretty good mix in my opinion. May – May – John Updike – This poem was enjoyable through its use of the word ‘may’ in the context of might rather than the name of the month. The children could use this poem as inspiration to write their own version using the word ‘may’ or to explore other words that have dual meanings in the English language.Winner of the Waterstones Children’s Gift of the Year 2018, this lavish poetry collection is a perfect present for any age. This was a beautiful presented and illustrated book, that I will take pleasure in reading to young family members, if ever the occasion arises. Throughout the course of the term or year, I would collate all poems that the children had written to create our own class anthology and share in the school library. Overall this is very well thought out and beautiful collection of poetry and illustrations from start to finish, which would be very versatile in a classroom setting. With younger children I would use this book as a read aloud and share a poem a day, discussing the characteristics of each month/ season. With older children I would use the book to support and explore cross-curricular activities, such as those mentioned in the selected poems above.