How to write poetry: Tongue twisters

There is nothing more fun than trying to expel a tongue twister from your lips, however, "she sells sea shells by the sea shore" is getting a little long in the tooth. So make up your own tongue twister to challenge a friend.

What you need:

• pencil
• paper
• imagination

Number of players:

Activity:

Tongue twisters are phrases or sentences which are hard to speak fast, usually because of alliteration or a sequence of words with very similar sounds. Tongue twisters help develop speech skills in young children as well as older children who need additional help with speech therapy.

To get the full effect of tongue twisters you should repeat them several times, as quickly as possible, without stumbling or mispronouncing. Good luck!

Writing your own tongue twister.

Writing a tongue twister can be easy if you follow these simple steps.

The one thing that needs to be understood to write a tongue twister is alliteration. Alliteration is the repetition of a single consonant sound in two or more words strung together. An example of alliteration is silly sausage or crafty cat. Use alliteration throughout your sentence and you have a tongue twister.

Another quality of a tongue twister are the types of words that it must contain. Although a tongue twister is a silly story as such, it still has to make sense.

Be sure to include:

• one noun – who the story is about
• one verb – the action your character is performing or the state your character is in
• one adverb – a word to modify a manner or time of a verb
• adjectives – describing words, ordinarily describing the nouns in the sentence

In this tongue twister below, we will point out each word to you so it is clearer.

Penny played with playful puppies and the puppies playfully played with Penny.

Noun: Penny
Verb: played
Adverb: playfully

Now you try!

Firstly, pick a consonant that you would like to use throughout the tongue twister.

Then pick a subject matter – above we have used puppies.

Decide what your character is going to be doing with your subject matter – in our tongue twister Penny played playfully.

Throw a few words in there to make a story and repeat. See how fast you can say the words without stumbling or mispronouncing them.