Short poem about dreams for children

April 10, 2013 1:40 PM

Can you help me find a <30 second poem about dreams that is appropriate for first graders?

I am a teacher and my school is doing a school-wide "dreams" project where kids are creating a flag that shows their future dreams (it is part of an initiative about equity and race but essentially they are thinking about what they want to be when they grow up.) Every class needs to do a video under thirty seconds of our class doing something to represent the dreams project and I figured the easiest thing to do would be a choral reading of a children's poem about dreams. It needs to 1. be quite short, 2. be understandable to first graders, 3. be about dreams. Can anyone recommend a poem that might be suitable? I thought of the "What happens to a dream/ Does it explode?" one by Langston Hughes but I think it might be a touch too long and a touch over their heads.

posted by mermily to Education (12 answers total)

The Land of Nod by Robert Louis Stevenson

From breakfast on through all the day
At home among my friends I stay,
But every night I go abroad
Afar into the land of Nod.

All by myself I have to go,
With none to tell me what to do --
All alone beside the streams
And up the mountain-sides of dreams.

The strangest things are there for me,
Both things to eat and things to see,
And many frightening sights abroad
Till morning in the land of Nod.

Try as I like to find the way,
I never can get back by day,
Nor can remember plain and clear
The curious music that I hear.
posted by phunniemee at 1:46 PM on April 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Could it possibly be a song lyric? Because I can imagine a choir of first graders singing this, choral style:

All my life
Is changing every day
In every possible way

And oh my dreams
It's never quite as it seems
Cause you're a dream to me

... might be beautiful.
posted by jbickers at 1:47 PM on April 10, 2013

OP, I thought you were going to reference the more canonical Dreams poem by Langston Hughes, which is simpler than the one you mention, and is frequently taught to children:

Dreams

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
Langston Hughes
posted by third rail at 1:48 PM on April 10, 2013 [5 favorites]

30 seconds is very short and 1st graders are not the clearest speakers in my experience. I would suggest:

I dream of love
I dream of faith
I dream of hope
I dream of culture
I dream of life
And I dream sweet dreams.

I Dream..., Tsunami HiroshiSu

It would be cute in sort of rounds, where they all said "I dream of love" and then a quarter each did the next four lines, and then they all did the last line together.
posted by DarlingBri at 1:51 PM on April 10, 2013

Best answer: “If you are a dreamer, come in.
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, a hoper, a prayer, a magic-bean-buyer.
If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire, for we have some flax-golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in!”

-- Shel Silverstein
posted by Mchelly at 1:57 PM on April 10, 2013 [4 favorites]

Good Dreams
© Olga Matushkina
Knock, knock! Hush, hush
Good dreams quietly marsh.
Like the fairies they bring stories and tales,
And they sing their song: “Bala-boo, bala-bash”.

They dance, they jump,
They play the drum,
But when someone in a house wakes up –
The good dreams end up their fun.

They say “good day!” and go away.
But when we sleep they start again
Tell their stories, and play, and marsh
And sing their song: “Bala-boo, bala-bash”.
posted by Lynsey at 2:32 PM on April 10, 2013

What about the lyrics to "Imagine" by John Lennon?
posted by These Birds of a Feather at 2:45 PM on April 10, 2013

Last Night I Dreamed of Chickens

Last night I dreamed of chickens,
there were chickens everywhere,
they were standing on my stomach,
they were nesting in my hair,
they were pecking at my pillow,
they were hopping on my head,
they were ruffling up their feathers
as they raced about my bed.

They were on the chairs and tables,
they were on the chandeliers,
they were roosting in the corners,
they were clucking in my ears,
there were chickens, chickens, chickens
for as far as I could see...
when I woke today, I noticed
there were eggs on top of me.

Jack Prelutsky
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:12 PM on April 10, 2013 [2 favorites]

FROZEN DREAM

I'll take the dream I had last night
And put it in my freezer,
So someday long and far away
When I'm an old grey geezer,
I'll take it out and thaw it out,
This lovely dream I've frozen,
And boil it up and sit me down
And dip my old cold toes in.

- Shel Silverstein
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:02 PM on April 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

(Is this over the heads of first graders? Perhaps, but it's nice to hear beautiful things before you understand them. If you're looking for a choral version, it's been set to music several times too.)

Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by W.B. Yeats

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
posted by thetortoise at 4:47 PM on April 10, 2013

I loved Brod Bagert's collection If Only I Could Fly when I was that age, and the title poem is about dreams. I still remember it pretty well but don't have it immediately at hand, so can't post anything more specific.
posted by asperity at 5:22 PM on April 10, 2013

Response by poster: These are fantastic! Thanks so much for the replies!
posted by mermily at 6:10 PM on April 10, 2013