FLL- Correct Poems

[lighthouseacademy]

One of the complaints I have seen on reviews was that the poems are not always correct in the book. I was wary of this and did not purchase the book. However, I realized I needed it for my son, so I now have it. What have you found to be true? I have actually found 3 different versions of the poem "Work." One in the book, one attributed to an author, and one in the book A Book of Virtues. All of them are mostly the same but not entirely. What are your thoughts?
Thanks.

[Brenda in FL]

The first time through - I changed some of the poems to the original version. I didn't think it was that big of a deal. I did that for the Days of Birth, The year, and possibly the Goops.

The second time through - since dc#2 had memorized much of the poems when dc#1 did - I actually chose different poems of similar length for some. And I also used the adapted version for The Year, because she preferred that one.

I really, really like using FLL and I don't feel that some of the poems being adapted is reason to not use the book at all.

HTH

[WTMindy]

just a different version. And, my question is, does it really matter if Thursday's child is full of woe or whatever the other version says? The idea is that they are memorizing poetry. But, I think a person can substitute any poem they want. We have liked IEW Poetry Memorization program.

[Sue G in PA]

and honestly, we didn't really even memorize all of them. The Monday's Child poem was one that I can remember being changed and it wasn't all that different. I'm a perfectionist so it "bugs" me, but really, when you think about it...it's not that big a deal, KWIM? You can look up the real poems and have dc memorize the "real" ones if you prefer. THey are pretty common poems. HTH.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

One of the complaints I have seen on reviews was that the poems are not always correct in the book. I was wary of this and did not purchase the book. However, I realized I needed it for my son, so I now have it. What have you found to be true? I have actually found 3 different versions of the poem "Work." One in the book, one attributed to an author, and one in the book A Book of Virtues. All of them are mostly the same but not entirely. What are your thoughts?
Thanks.

I think that we memorized the whole Catterpiller since it had a definite author. The ones that were traditional and had several versions, I didn't worry about and just picked the one I liked better. I think that we did The Goops as it was in the book. (Doing a quick Google search, it looks like Burgess wrote a lot about the Goops and the selection in FLL is a selection rather than an adaptation.)

[Beth in Central TX]

I vaguely remember a post on the old boards from PHP saying that they tried to use the most common version of the poems in FLL, but that different versions did exist. Like Mindy, the small differences between the different versions did not matter to me. FLL provided a gentle introduction to grammar and guided my older sons to memorize poems in 1st grade. My youngest son will use FLL next year.

[nmoira]

I vaguely remember a post on the old boards from PHP saying that they tried to use the most common version of the poems in FLL, but that different versions did exist.I don't think that versions "adapted by Sara Buffington" are the most common versions.

This greatly irritated me about FLL. I didn't like having to go check originals to see what was bowdlerized. The worst by far was The Months by Sara Coleridge. Why even bother when you have to change so much of the poem???? I'm not sure why they left Coleridge's name on it; maybe that's why they changed the title. However, even The Caterpillar didn't escape "adapting" in the form of editing out lines (and this wasn't even indicated in the text).

I was very surprised that self-professed classical educators would think this was OK.

The Months by Sara Coleridge

(From the Oxford Book of Children's Verse)

January brings the snow,
Makes our feet and fingers glow.

February brings the rain,
Thaws the frozen lake again.

March brings breezes loud and shrill,
Stirs the dancing daffodil.

April brings the primrose sweet,
Scatters daises at our feet.

May brings flocks of pretty lambs,
Skipping by their fleecy ****s.
[May brings sunshine full and bright
Sends the busy bees to flight -- FLL]
June brings tulips, lilies, roses,
Fills the children's hand with posies.

Hot July brings cooling showers,
Apricots and gillyflowers.
[Lemonade, and lazy hours. -- FLL]
August brings the sheaves of corn,
Then the harvest home is borne.
[August brings the warmest air,
Sandy feet and sea-wet hair. --FLL]
Warm September brings the fruit,
Sportsmen then begin to shoot.
[September brings the fruit so sweet,
Apples ripe from summer heat. -- FLL]
Fresh October brings the pheasant,
Then to gather nuts is pleasant.
[October brings the colored trees,
Scampering squirrels and cooling breeze. -- FLL]
Dull November brings the blast,
Then the leaves are whirling fast.

Chill December brings the sleet,
Blazing fire, and Christmas treat.

FLL hints (though doesn't say outright) that the only "alternate line" is the final one, for which they suggest "Blazing fire, and Winter treat." But, at least they warn you this poem was adapted. Why would I want my children to memorize anything other than the original poem, or and intact excerpt?

[Beth in Central TX]

Like I said, it was a vague memory, but my impression was that FLL included poems that would be easy to read and memorize for 1st & 2nd graders. From the original model you quoted, I think using the word borne would be confusing for a new reader. Also, gillyflowers, sheaves, and pheasant are not only difficult to read for some 1st/2nd graders, but also difficult to say at that age. The FLL poems were identified as adapted, and as homeschoolers, we reserve the right to teach what's there or not. The fact that I had to look up the original poem to identify the adaptation told me that it wasn't a critical deviation in my child's education. As a classical educator myself, I adjust (up or down) the material that I teach to match the level where my boys can understand it; therefore, I think FLL was well written for its intended audience--1st & 2nd grade students. Of course, this is just my opinion.

[Eliana]

The one poem which is incomplete, rather than the adapted Coleridge or the little mnemonic rhymes which have multiple versions, is Rossetti's Caterpillar - and that, as I recall from the conversation immediately after FLL was published, was because the anthology it was gotten from had an incomplete version.

[Here is the full poem:

Brown and furry
Caterpillar in a hurry,
Take your walk
To the shady leaf, or stalk,
Or what not,
Which may be the chosen spot.
No toad spy you,
Hovering bird of prey pass by you;
Spin and die,
To live again a butterfly. ]

There are a few nice poems
(The Eleanor Farjeon one included to illustrate verbs
has always been a favorite poem in our house.)

FLL 3 has a *much* better selection of poetry.


I'm going to cut and paste the review I wrote of FLL many years ago. Since the discussion it prompted then discouraged me so much that I left the boards for a while (my fault, completely, I took things too personally and too much to heart and that, put together with some of the feelings brought up recently on the HS board about the changing nature of the boards overloaded my circuits), I want to preface this with a disclaimer and an excerpt from something I wrote then to someone who found my comments personally discouraging:

Many people disagreed with my assessment of the poetry, the narration lessons, and the copywork sentences and felt that my preferred sources would be too much for kids, too confusing, too high falutin'. If anyone reading this for the first time feels that way, you are not alone! *Please* don't be discouraged by the standards my family has chosen, they are not intended to disparage yours!

If my approach feels hopelessly out of reach, but desirable, here is what I said to a poster then:

My passion for the “fine arts” came from growing up in a home filled with art, music, poetry, literature, etc - and from the regular part museums, concerts, and plays had in our lives. I would not describe myself as particularly knowledgeable in any of these areas, but they are familiar territory to me. My mother, who provided this marvelous background, grew up in a home with none of these resources. She’d heard of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart, for example, but that was about it. My mother was an adult when she started exploring ‘the arts’ - but she shared her enthusiasm with us and filled our home with her discoveries. Why am I sharing this? What she did, any of you can do. It is not as inaccessible as it might feel. As you explore, discover, listen, look, read, you’ll find that the arts are universally accessible; they express the essence of human experience and although not all poems, paintings, etc will connect for every person, and you may not ever feel comfortable “analyzing” any of them - you will start to feel at home with them…. and your children, growing up with this, need never feel intimidated by these subjects - and someday they’ll have to explain that really they aren’t such experts, they just love poetry (or music or art).


I've run out of posting space, I will reply to this post with my old review.

[Eliana]

**I have used & am using this text, it has many wonderful features, and the overall design is brilliant. It falls short of my expectations on a number of fronts, and I will try to explain those as clearly as I can. I am not using it at the recommended ages (my K just finished & my 4 year old has just started) nor am I using all the components, but despite my criticisms of many aspects, I feel strongly that this text has qualities which are unparalleled in other programs.**


FLL is designed to be an introductory text for first and second grade language arts. It includes memory work, copywork/dictation, narration, and grammar. The introduction states that one needs to provide a phonics/spelling program and a formal penmanship program. It also sets forth the goals of the program and some guidelines for implementation. Of especial note is the emphasis on correct modeling and taking the time to have the child speak & write correctly. “Every time a child speaks or writes correctly, that pattern is imprinted on his mind; the same is true for patterns that are incorrectly practiced. It is better to do less work, and do it correctly, than to practice errors.” It is also noted that “…this early introduction is not intended to result in mastery; mastery comes later.”

The are 5 different styles of print in the text (suggested wording for the instructor, notes to the instructor, suggested wording fro the child, text the child is to read or follow, and definitions/terms.) It can be a little hard to follow at first, and the page sometimes feels cluttered, but I’m not sure how the same structure could have been better organized.

Overview:

The “First Grade” section is comprised of 100 lessons which contain:

- 6 poems for memorization
- 9 stories or poems for narration
- 4 pictures for narration
- lessons on: nouns, pronouns, action verbs, initials, abbreviations, titles of respect, and the 4 types of sentences (There are also lessons on dates, days of the week, seasons, months, telephone numbers and addresses.)
- copywork exercises which I will describe more fully below

The “Second Grade” section is comprised of 100 lessons which contain:

- 4 poems for memorization
- 7 stories for narration
- 5 pictures for narration
- lessons on: state of being verbs, linking verbs, helping verbs, commas in addresses & series, contractions, adjectives, predicate adjectives, interjections, conjunctions, direct and indirect quotations, adverbs, articles, prepositions, synonyms, and antonyms
- copywork & dictation exercises
- composition lessons: letterwriting, addressing an envelope, ordering ideas, forming paragraphs, and “copying the final work”

Here are some descriptions of and comments on the various strands of FLL:


Poetry:

FLL includes 10 "poems" specifically designated for memorization...

1 Christina Rossetti poem (but *not* the original version)

3 Mother Goose Rhymes (chosen, as far as I can tell, to reinforce the grammar lessons)

"Mr. Nobody" & "The Goops" which are amusing and a nice change of pace if one is also covering "real" poetry.

An adaptation of Sara Coleridge's rhyme about the months - the original is okay (I prefer, for poetic merit, C Rossetti's) but I think if one is going to use a poem, one should not alter it or modernize it, ymmv.

“All Things Beautiful” by C. Alexander. I thought this an odd choice, it is the only long poem in the book (6 stanzas) and I think there are better choices, but ymmv.

2 are character-oriented rhymes, "Work" and "Hearts are Like Doors"... if you want to hear my spiel about that type of poetry, write to me off list, but here is a contrast:

Compare:

"Work"
(Anonymous)

Work while you work,
Play while you play;
This is the way
To be happy each day.
All that you do,
Do with your might;
Things done by halves
Are never done right.

To:

"The Coin"
(Sara Teasdale)

In to my heart's treasury
I slipped a coin
That time cannot take
Nor a thief purloin, -
Oh, better than the minting
Of a gold-crowned king
Is the safe-kept memory
Of a lovely thing.

Or:

"To a Child"
(William Wordsworth)

Small service is true service while it lasts:
Of humblest friends, bright creature! Scorn not one:
The daisy, by the shadow that it casts,
Protects the lingering dewdrop from the sun.


The poems I’ve selected are no longer than “Work”, but they are poems of literary merit, not rhymes about virtue - not that there is anything wrong with either rhymes or virtue, but when choosing poetry for memory work I believe one should select the highest quality. In my, not so humble, opinion the selections in FLL are not aiming for excellence.

There are other poems included, some of which are more of the quality I expected. (An Eleanor Farjeon poem "Dancing" is used to illustrate action verbs, RL Stevenson's "Wind" is in a chapter on helping verbs, the 1st stanza of Wordsworth's "Daffodils" is in a chapter on prepositions.)

I would *strongly* recommend that one supplement or replace the poetry in FLL with higher quality selections.

For those interested in the comparison of good poetry to bad, and great poetry to good, I would recommend reading Perrine’s “Sound and Sense”. He devotes 2 delightful chapters to this topic.

Narration:

The chapters introducing story & picture narrations contain clear guidelines for parents new to the skill and suggestions for prompting a reluctant narrator.

Stories:

Most of the stories are adaptations of Aesop’s fables. I do use these & my children have enjoyed them, but I would have preferred more literary versions.

Compare:

From H. Holder’s “Aesop’s Fables”

A Hare taunted a Tortoise because of the slowness of her pace and boasted of his own great speed. “Then let us have a race,” said the Tortoise. “I’ll run with you five miles, and the Fox yonder shall be the judge.” The Hare agreed and away they went. But it his eagerness to win he started off as fast as he could and soon left the Tortoise far behind. The Hare, tired from his exertions, stopped by the way to take a nap, confident that if the Tortoise went by he could easily overtake her. Meanwhile the resolute Tortoise kept up a slow but steady pace and plodded along. The Hare overslept and awakened to find, when he arrived at the goal, that the Tortoise has reached it just before him.

Perseverance and determination compensate for the absence of natural gifts.

From FLL:

“One day a rabbit made fun of a turtle. ‘How short your feet are! And how slowly you move!” he said. “Does it take you all day to walk to the table for breakfast?”
“My feet may be short,” the turtle said, “but I can still beat you at a race!”
The rabbit laughed. He was sure that the little turtle could not possibly win! So he proposed that they run a race.
“All right,” said the turtle, “but we need someone to declare the winner.”
“Let’s ask the fox,” said the rabbit.
“So they asked the fox to watch the race and decide on the winner. The fox said, “Ready, set, go!” And the race was on.
The turtle and the rabbit started out. The rabbit went leaping ahead in huge jumps and bounds. Soon he was far, far out of sight. The turtle plodded slowly along, so slowly that you could barely see him move.
The rabbit looked behind him. The turtle was nowhere in sight! And he was tired from all that leaping and bounding. So he decided to lie down beside the road and take a nap.
While he was sleeping, the turtle plodded right past him! When the rabbit woke up, he could just see, far in the distance, the turtle heading across the finish line.
He jumped up and ran as fast as he could. But before he could catch up, the turtle had crossed the line and won the race.
“The turtle is the winner!” the fox declared.
“Wait! Wait!” the rabbit cried. “I am the faster runner!”
“That may be so,” the fox said. “But the turtle has won this race. Remember: it is much better to be slow and steady than to be fast and lazy.”

Moral: “slow and steady wins the race.”

While there is nothing *wrong * with the FLL version, Holder’s version has a richer use of language and no excess verbiage.


Pictures:

I find the pictures for narrations to be unappealing and in some the drawings are not clearly enough reproduced to discern the details mentioned in the text. I would have preferred either works of art or contemporary photographs (such as the cover picture.)



the rest of the review will be in another post

[Eliana]

Grammar:

This is where the text really shines, the organization and presentation of grammatical concepts. The scope & sequence is ambitious and a wealth of grammatical information is given in a memorable and accessible way without compromising quality or accuracy. My only complaint is that the presentation of the material is often, in my opinion, better suited to a younger audience than a 1st or 2nd grader. Although the material is advanced, the bite sized lessons, generous repetition, and the tone of the script are more appropriate for a K student, or an advanced preschooler.

The introduction to nouns begins with memorizing the definition ("A noun is the name of a person, place, thing, or idea"), the nouns naming people are introduced, common & proper, then places, etc. It is concrete, ties in well to a child's interests without sacrificing accuracy.... *but* it spends 11 lessons on names: Introducing nouns, common nouns (through family relationships: mother, father, sister, brother, etc), proper nouns (an extension of the previous lesson with parents & siblings), another lesson with grandparents' names, another lesson with occupations, an extension of the previous lesson, writing the child's proper name, writing first names (of family members), Family names (is last names), middle names, and full names. There are also 2 more lessons later on proper nouns (aunts & uncles and cousins).
Copywork/Dictation:

The first 41 lessons are completely oral, although there are written “enrichment activities” given periodically. Lesson 42 introduces copywork with the child’s name. More than half of the remaining lessons in the first grade section have some copywork included. Each time copywork or dictation are done, there are 3 options given (Lesson 53: “Rabbit ran the race.” “Ben and Sherri skipped and hopped.” “The wind howled and the rain blew and the thunder roared.”)

The copywork is often based on the lesson (the pronouns learned, a sentence about month or season, the child’s initials, the months & their abbreviations, etc) and starts out very simply, which is marvelous. My complaint is that as the sentences lengthen, the quality does not improve. I would have expected the more advanced copywork to be of a higher literary quality, as is proposed in TWTM: "The classical pupil learns to write by copying great writers."

Dictation is introduced in Lesson 122. Again, there are careful instruction about how to proceed and a scripted directions to give the child. Copywork continues for another quarter of the section after dictation is introduced. My complaint here is the same as above, once the student has learned the mechanics of dictation s/he should be using the highest quality material possible. (And as you can see from my examples below, I’m not suggesting Dickens, Eliot, or Shakespeare. I am advocating the use of vivid, well written text.)

Here are some comparisons, which I hope will clarify my position (I will start with the more complex sentences and work my way backwards):

Lesson 196
Dictation exercise: review session 1
[One chooses one of the following 3 options.]

“My brother and I play soccer. We play on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays in the summer. In the fall we play other teams.”

“My family and I camp at night in the park. We usually go on Friday nights and stay until Saturday afternoon. Spring, summer, and fall are good times to camp.”

“My baby sister and I climb on monkey bars at the park. She likes to swing, giggle, and then fall down on purpose. In the spring, we go on Mondays and Wednesdays, but in the fall we only go on Saturdays.”

----------------------------------------------------------------
Some comparable length selections from children’s literature:


“After the sugar snow had gone, spring came. Birds sang in the leafing hazel bushes along the crooked rail fence.”

[“Little House in the Big Woods” by Laura Ingalls Wilder]
================================================== ==========
“Papa came at last. His steps on the stairs were slow and heavy tonight. It had been a long hard day at the shop with very little business done.”

[“All of a Kind Family” by Sydney Taylor]
================================================

“In the sheltered harbor there were waves, but nothing to matter. The big rocks on either side broke the waves before they could get in. But they could hear the crashing of breakers on the outer shoals and along the steep western shore”

[“Swallows and Amazons” by Arthur Ransome]
================================================== =====

Lesson 156:

Sentences for dictation:

“We visited a zoo and saw an animal.”

“My sister and I saw an airplane, a helicopter, and a jet.”

“At the market we bought an apple, an orange, a banana, and a bunch of grapes.”

-----------------------------------------------
Some alternate suggestions

“Sarah lay on a quilt under a tree.”

[“The Courage of Sarah Noble” by Alice Dalgliesh]
================================================== =====

“It was a fine spring morning in the forest as he started out.”

[“Winnie the Pooh” by AA Milne]
================================================== ==========

“The river was swift and muddy. The sun shining on it made the ripples first brown and then blue.”

[“Little Pear” by Eleanor Frances Lattimore]
================================================== =====

Lesson 111:

“January brings the snow,
Helps the skis and sleds to go.”

[The copywork for 12 lessons, roughly sequential, is taken from “The Year” (adapted). I think this is a dreadful waste of opportunity for higher quality copywork.]

---------------------------------------
“At that moment there was a racket in the courtyard below.”

[“A Search for Delicious” by Natalie Babbit]

Lesson 121:

“May brings sunshine full and bright,
Sends the busy bees to flight.”

-------------------------------------------
“Far into the night, while the other creatures slept, Charlotte worked on her web.”

[“Charlotte’s Web” by EB White]



It is my contention that dictation and copywork are (or should be) primarily foundation stones to composition and only secondarily reinforcement tools for grammatical concepts and that literary merit should almost never be sacrificed in favor of coordination with the day’s lesson.

I have not included examples of earlier lessons because there are no reasonable literary substitutes for the 2-3 words sentences suggested for the easiest level, but my complaints do apply to the other levels of difficulty. Since I did FLL with a K student (and yes, he is a *very* wiggly, active little boy) I did not need to adapt the written work the way I would recommend be done for an older student.


Composition:

There are only a few composition lessons/exercises in FLL: letter writing is done 3 times (including a postcard), and at the very end of the 2nd grade section, there are a few lessons based around a writing a description of the child’s morning routine. The lessons are okay, but they felt a little incongruous.

For my 1st & 2nd graders I prefer to concentrate more on copywork & dictation while continuing oral narrations & then, gradually, turn the oral narrations into written narrations, and *then* proceed to more formal composition.


I hope this gives you a better sense of the strengths and weaknesses of FLL

[st_claire]

That was a great review. I haven't used FLL, but I always assumed that the copywork, poetry, etc... were just suggestions, and that better would be to use examples from what you are currently studying. So take a book you are reading with your child for example, and use selections from that. It makes it more relevant and helps to tie things in together across the subjects.

[lighthouseacademy]

Thank you for all of your comments. I am a math and logic oriented person. I love to read though. I was never encouraged to read classical literature and good quality other books until I had a taste for brain twinkies... So, I aim to change that in my children! I feel that if you go to the trouble to learn a poem, you might as well learn it as it was written originally. I will just search out the originals and paste them into my book!
I will also take the advice to change the dictations and copywork because I also feel that value is important above satisfying a topic.
BTW, how and where do you find your alternate quotes? Any suggestions for the nearly literature inept!?

[nmoira]

Like I said, it was a vague memory, but my impression was that FLL included poems that would be easy to read and memorize for 1st & 2nd graders. From the original model you quoted, I think using the word borne would be confusing for a new reader. Also, gillyflowers, sheaves, and pheasant are not only difficult to read for some 1st/2nd graders, but also difficult to say at that age.If that's the case, I would argue that another poem should have been chosen, or, if there was nothing appropriate, one should have been written especially for the text. FWIW, there was no indication in the text that The Caterpillar was altered. I don't recall about the others.

[mcconnellboys]

It is my understanding that these were reworked to better fit young children. I believe there's a note in the book about those poems which were adapted by Sara Buffington, and why. I'm not sure why this would be a problem...? Is only a single version of a story or poem ever acceptable? I really liked the versions of the poems as edited by them. I thought they were completely appropriate for a first grader.

Regena

[Eliana]

Thank you for all of your comments. I am a math and logic oriented person. I love to read though. I was never encouraged to read classical literature and good quality other books until I had a taste for brain twinkies... So, I aim to change that in my children! I feel that if you go to the trouble to learn a poem, you might as well learn it as it was written originally. I will just search out the originals and paste them into my book!
I will also take the advice to change the dictations and copywork because I also feel that value is important above satisfying a topic.
BTW, how and where do you find your alternate quotes? Any suggestions for the nearly literature inept!?


I don't really do anything systematic - I grab sentences from whatever that child is reading/listening to, or from books which have been read and reread so much that we all have them practically memorized... Every now and again I pull a few books off the shelf and type up some appealing sentences and save them in a Word document.

Tolkien, CS Lewis, Arthur Ransome, LI Wilder, E Nesbit, EB White, Natalie Babbitt, LM Boston, Frances Burnett, George MacDonald, the Milly Molly Mandy books, Little Pear and its sequels, The Gammage Cup, All of a Kind Family, The Courage of Sarah Noble, Winnie the Pooh, and Mr Popper's Penguins are chapter book sources which come to mind.

I also use favorite picture books: The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge, The Maggie B, Feathers for Lunch, Where's that Cat?, Katy and the Big Snow, The Ponies of Mykylengi, The Third Story Cat, Fritz and the Beautiful Horses, Miss Rumphius, The Empty Pot, The Day We Saw the Sun Come Up, The Lorax, Ferdinand, When the Wind Stops, Norse lullaby, The Moon was the Best, Blueberries for Sal, and The Snowy Day.

It can be fun to choose a dictation or copywork selection from a child's current bedtime story.


For narration exercises I use either Milo Winter's Aesop's fables (http://www.amazon.com/Aesop-Children/dp/0026890224/ref=ed_oe_h) or Heidi Holder's (http://www.amazon.com/Aesops-Fables-Aesop/dp/0670106437/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205987646&sr=1-1). Both are out of print, but both are available for under a dollar (plus shipping charges) on Amazon's Marketplace.

For poetry I created an anthology pairing each poem with a work of art. (Hiroshige's A Sudden Shower at Ohashi with RLS's 'rain', Seraut's Lighthouse with 'I'd Like to be a lighthouse')

I will follow up this post with a copy of a post I made to the old boards when someone asked about our poetry selections.

[Eliana]

"Rain" by RL Stevenson
[Fly away, fly away over the sea] by C. Rossetti
"A Dragon-fly" E. Farjeon
'Rain Poem" E. Coatsworth
"I'd Like to be a Lighthouse" R. Field
"The falling Star" S Teasdale
All of the above authors have one (or more) anthology of poetry for children. As do De la Mare & Fisher (see below). For sheer fun "Eletelephony" by L Richards & "I caught a Little Rhyme" by E Merriman are unbeatable, and my middle 2 have a passion for some of TS Eliot's cat poems, especially "Macavity"... we try for a variety- some poems are sheer fun, others lyrical & melodious, some are "children's poems, others by "classic" poets...
[I'm nobody. Who are you?] E. Dickinson
"The Arrow & the Song" Longfellow
"The Eagle" Tennyson
"Sea Shell" A. Lowell
"Afternoon on a Hill" E. St Vincent Millay
-Longfellow has some lovely shorter poems as well as the long ones for which he is so well known.
-Many of Dickinson's poems are very appealing to children, [I have no frigate like a book] has been a favorite of my eldest dd for many years now.
-Tennyson's "The Eagle" is deceptively short, I don't do this with my littlest ones.
- "Sea Shell" is pure fun! Lowell has some other lovely little poems
- Millay has some amazing poems! "G-d's World" is a favorite of mine, but I always love her use of language.
- I haven't listed any specific selection, but we do a lot of Shakespeare... sonnets, songs, monologues.... "Under the Greenwood Tree" is the first one all of my kids learned at once (their idea... my then 7 year old pulled it out of an anthology, made up a tune for it & taught it to all her younger siblings. Someday I'll write up my thoughts about why it is essential that high quality literature in general & Shakespeare in specific should be included from the earliest ages possible, but not tonight!
We've done excerpts from many of the works we've read (from the originals, not from adaptations!)("The Iliad", "The Aeniad" "Gilgamesh" "Beowulf" "Canterbury Tales" "The Fairie Queen", etc)
As I mentioned on the other board "The Listening Child" (ed Thacher & Wilkinson" has a lovely selection of classic poetry selected for children. I have found many gems in "1000 poems for children" (I'm blanking on the editor's name, but it's in my post on the other board... sorry I'm doing most of this from memory!)
If you want suggestions for an older student, let me know...
========================================
============================================
Some poems we have memorized :
=====================================
======================================
[Butterfly, Butterfly, sipping the sand]
John Bannister Tabb
Butterfly, Butterfly, sipping the sand,
Have you forgotten the flowers of the land?
Or are you so sated with honey and dew
That sand-filtered water tastes better to you?
===========================================
[Alone in my house]
Basho (trans. Dawnine Spivak)
alone in my house—
only the morning glories
straggle to my door
==================================
[Be like the bird]
Victor Hugo
Be like the bird, who
Halting in his flight
On limb too slight
Feels it give way beneath him,
Yet sings
Knowing he hath wings.
=================================
The Rainbow
Walter de la Mare
I saw the lovely arch
Of Rainbow span the sky,
The gold sun burning
As the rain swept by.
In bright-ringed solitude
The showery foliage shone
One lovely moment—
And the Bow was gone.
====================================
I Like It When It's Mizzly
Aileen Fisher
I like it when it's mizzly
and just a little drizzly
so everything looks far away
and make-believe and frizzly.
I like it when it's foggy
and sounding very froggy.
I even like it when it rains
on streets and weepy windowpanes
and catkins in the poplar tree
and me.
=======================================
I Heard a Bird Sing
Oliver Herford
I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December
A magical thing
And sweet to remember.
“We are nearer to Spring
Than we were in September,”
I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December.
==================================
The Titmouse (excerpt)
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Piped a tiny voice hard by,
Gay and polite, a cheerful cry,
Chic-chicadeedee! saucy note
Out of sound heart and merry throat,
As if it said, ‘Good day, good sir!
Fine afternoon, old passenger!
Happy to meet you in these places,
Where January brings few faces.’
======================================
=========================================
"Grass Sandals" is a lovely picture book about the Japanese poet Basho & it includes many of his poems (such as the one above), despite their brevity, not all of them are easy to memorize, but my kids *love* them!
Oliver Herford has a number of anthologies of humorous verse as well (including a spoof of RLS entitled "The Kitten's garden of verse"... we didn't memorize any of them, but since the kids know RLS's work pretty well they were most amused!
"I like it When it's mizzly" is an excerpt from a book of A. Fisher "I like Weather" a mixture of text, poetry, and poetical text.
Here are a few poetry links Note:I am not in 100% agreement with all of them :)
An article by Penny Gardner (not specifically about poetry)
www.thehomeschoolmom.com/charlottemason.html (http://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/charlottemason.html)
An article by Karen Andreola about poetry:
http://www.home-school.com/Articles/CmPoetry.html
Ambleside's poetry page
www.amblesideonline.homestead.com/Poets.html (http://www.amblesideonline.homestead.com/Poets.html)
Some poetry sites: (I wish I has time to annotate this, sorry! Many of these are online, searchable poetry collections, none of them are specifically for children & all of them contain poems I would not give to a child. ymmv)
www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/index.html (http://www.cs.rice.edu/%7Essiyer/minstrels/index.html)
http://www.plagiarist.com/
http://www.poets.org/poets/index.cfm
http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Humanities/Literature/Poetry/Anthologies/
http://guweb2.gonzaga.edu/faculty/wheeler/chinese_poetry.html
www.web-books.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/contents.htm (http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/contents.htm)
http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/index.cfm
http://www.daypoems.net/

[ELaurie]

Thank you Eliana, for your wonderful suggestions for poetry reading, memorization and enjoyment!

[Julianna]

Eliana,

Thanks for sharing so much information. I absolutely love some of the poems you listed for memorization. My 6yo loves to memorize poetry and I think she'll take to these right away!

"The Falling Star" happens to be the poem she chose last week!