Kids Personification

It is common for humans to use expressions that give objects human qualities and emotions. Objects are incapable of talking and feeling like humans are, yet giving them life allows us to develop a better understanding of a given concept. Take a look at the simple sentence examples that are available online. These figurative expressions are referred to as personification.

Just like man other types of figures of speech, such as hyperbole expressions, onomatopoeic words, etc., personification can be a bit more complex for younger children to understand and comprehend. For the proper use of this literary device, a complete and thorough understanding of how personification works are essential. Since it is used in both literature and daily life, one must understand how it is used.

What Is Personification?

A personification is a form of figurative language used to give objects or ideas human-like abilities, qualities or characteristics. Think about it. Does your mother’s chocolate chip cookies ever ‘tempt’ you to take a bite of it? Does your homework ever ‘hide’ from you whenever you need it? The best way to determine whether or not personification is applied is to examine the statement, and then ask yourself if it is something that a human being is more likely to do. You may also see transitional phrases and sentences. This literary device helps make statements, stories or poems sound more interesting and descriptive to the people reading them. By bringing non-human objects to life, it makes it a lot easier for authors to carry out their message.

Let’s take this for example:

My alarm clock yells at me every morning.

Imagine your alarm clock yelling at you like your mom does when you’re running late for school. While an alarm clock may have its pair of hands to tell time, it doesn’t have a mouth nor a voice to make an actual sound. You may also like sentence fragments. An alarm clock is simply an inanimate object used to warn us of a particular time of day, so it can’t execute human actions (unless we’re talking about Cogsworth the clock from Beauty and the Beast, but that’s another story).

In most of the cases, personification is mainly taught to younger children through the concept of poetry. This is because simple poems, nursery rhymes, riddles, etc, are easier to understand and grasp. They have a smooth flow and are a natural tone of words. Teachers and parents can use these narratives to introduce the concept of personification to students properly. Imperative sentence examples can also be of great help to you.

“Hey, diddle, diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed
To see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.”

— Hey Diddle, Diddle by Mother Goose

The example that is given above is a nursery rhyme that is filled with personification. Although we like to believe that animals are capable of feeling and executing human emotions, it’s unlikely to witness a laughing dog in real life. You may also see run-on sentences. A dish and a spoon can’t move on its own, either, let alone run away. Also, have you ever witnessed a cat play the fiddle in real life?

“I’d love to take a poem to lunch
or treat it to a wholesome brunch
of fresh-cut fruit and apple crunch.
I’d spread it neatly on the cloth
beside a bowl of chicken broth
and watch a mug of root beer froth.”

— Take a Poem to Lunch by Denise Rodgers

Here, the author simply personifies a poem. To the speaker, the poem is something he or she could take out for lunch or brunch while enjoying a scrumptious meal together. Although it may seem like a humorous thought to consider in the real world, there is a deeper meaning within the text that the poet is trying to get across. You may also see exclamatory sentence examples.

And because the level of one’s understanding is bound to develop over time, students are likely to be greeted with more complex writings incorporated with personification such as the one below:

“To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells”

— To Autumn by John Keats

This poem personifies the Autumn season as an actual human person. The changes that happen to an individual during the season can be depicted in the poem. This way perhaps, the author captures the moments of the season as if it is Mother Nature spreading her magic around. Compound sentence examples can be used to make the best compound sentences needed so that the language is easily understandable.

Common Personification Examples

The use of personification goes beyond just English poetry and literature, and also, it is pretty evident in our everyday language. Sometimes, you may have used these lines many a time before, but because of how regularly it is applied in our everyday language we speak and goes unnoticed. Listed below are thirty examples of personification used in normal conversations: You may also see the interrogative sentence.

The sun is playing hide and seek with the clouds today.
Your flowers look like they’re begging for water.
The cacti in the dessert salute every single car that drives by.
The wildfire ran far and wide across the forest in a matter of minutes.
His book just flew off the shelves within a week of its release.
The tornado devoured everything that stood in its way.
I look so good in these pictures, I guess the camera just loves me.
Time flew faster than I expected.
Love is blind, and at times, crazy.
I spend my nights talking to the moon about you.
The trees danced to the rhythm of the wind.
They call Las Vegas the city that never sleeps.
You can kiss your freedom goodbye.
The party died as soon as somebody broke the glass door.
Fel heard the cake calling his name from inside the refrigerator.
Thunder grumbled as we reached the shoreline.
The trust I had in you just walked out that door.
What she saw made the love she had for him die.
The raindrops rest idly on top of my car.
This competitive industry would chew you up and spit you out in no time.
My dad’s car danced on the wet road.
This toy has a mind of its own.
The pen wrote down those words effortlessly.
The tree whispered silently to the wind.
I see the stars wink at me every night.
The silence crept into the classroom as soon as the teacher entered.
I’m so nervous, I could feel my heart jumping out my chest.
The angry storm keeps pounding our thin roof.
I think the weather doesn’t like me today.
I saw your headlights wink at me the other day.

Apart from literature and daily speech, personification may also be used in advertising. It’s a fun way to entice customers with expressions that are sensible, yet relatively peculiar. Personification, like the other literary devices used, adds more color in ways that allow the mind to dawdle. You may also see complete and incomplete sentences. It’s imaginative enough to make you stop and think about the picture portrayed in the narrative, and it’s creative enough to turn a dull piece of writing into something enthralling.

Kids Personification