Diamantes

Many children’s poets like to write rhyming poetry. So do I! And there’s nothing wrong with that—kids love rhyming poems. But a particular weakness of rhyming poems is that we end up with lots of “filler”—words like a, an, the, very, oh! and so on. They are words used just to provide a syllable when the meter demands it.
I think an excellent way to improve your rhyming poetry is to work on non-rhyming forms. One form I really like is the diamante. Here's the basic form:

one-word object
two adjectives describing line 1
three -ing verbs the line 1 object does
four words that link line 1 and line 7, usually two words for each
three -ing verbs the line 7 object does
two adjectives describing line 7
one-word object