Poetry Friday: The Highway Rat

Just in time for National Poetry Month, I have a fantastic new book by Julia Donaldson to share. The Highway Rat is the story of a dastardly character, a rat so mean and wicked that he steals the food of every creature he meets on the highway. Donaldson is the Children’s Laureate of the UK and she tells the story in rollicking rhyme that is inspired by the classic poem The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes .

The highway rat was a baddie. 
The highway rat was a beast.
He took what he wanted and ate what he took.
His life was one long feast.
His teeth were sharp and yellow, his manners were rough and rude,
And the Highway Rat went riding-
Riding-riding-
Riding along the highway
and stealing the travelers’ food.

The illustrations by Axel Scheffler are bold and funny. You can’t help but be charmed by the wicked but debonair rat. Donaldson creates the perfect ending for her Highway Rat.(Parents of preschoolers don’t need to worry, his fate is much less bloody than the original.) He gets his come-uppance thanks to a clever Duck but still has a happy ending.

This is one we all enjoyed. Afterwards we looked up the original Noyes poem and read that too. (Some of you might recognize it as one of the poems Anne Shirley recites for “the real authoress”.)

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Read, Write, Howl.

Poetry Friday: Hailstones and Halibut Bones

 I didn’t read a lot of poetry as a kid. Most of the poems I remember are either from A. A. Milne or from this 1961 classic by Mary O’Neill. Hailstones and Halibut Bones contains poems about all the colors of the rainbow. There is something vaguely psychedelic but in a comfortable way about the poems and the illustrations by John Wallner.
It’s a very accessible book for kids and a great one for poetry memorization.

John memorized about half of What is Black ? when he was in 1st grade and now he is working on all of What is Gray?. David is working on he first half of What is Orange? The first few lines are below.

What is Orange? by Mary O’Neill
Orange is a tiger lily,
A carrot,
A feather from a parrot,
A flame,
The wildest color
You can name.

 

Poetry Friday is hosted this week at Teaching Authors.

Poetry Friday: Math Puzzles

The word “unique” probably gets used too much to describe new books. I think I’m safe though in calling this collection of poems by J. Patrick Lewis (the Children’s Poet Laureate) unique.  Part poetry collection, part math puzzles and part tribute to 14 classic poets, Edgar Allan Poe’s Pie is truly one of a kind. It’s probably best for older kids as many of the math puzzles involve fractions and percents or other more advanced math concepts. It also may be best enjoyed if you first know at least some of the poems that these refer to. I like that Lewis includes short blurbs on each poet at the end. All in all it’s a fun book. I would definitely recommend it if you have a student who enjoys math and maybe isn’t so sure about poetry. Or a student who really likes poetry but needs a little something extra to spice up math.

Here’s an excerpt from the title poem “Edgar Allan Poe’s Apple Pie”:

Once upon a midnight rotten, 
Cold, and rainy, I’d forgotten
All about the apple pie
Still cooling from the hour before. 


Poetry Friday is hosted this week at Violet Nesdoly Poems.

Poetry Friday: All That is Gold Does Not Glitter

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king. 

-J.R.R. Tolkien from The Fellowship of the Ring

This is the current poem the boys are working on memorizing. John was especially excited as we are reading through The Lord of the Rings together and Aragorn is one of his favorite characters. The poem is a great one to memorize. It’s short enough to be fairly easy but rich in both language and meaning.

A list of some of the previous poems we’ve memorized and more on the general process we use. 

Poetry Friday is hosted this week by No Water River. 

Poetry Friday: If I Never Forever Endeavor

If in all of forever,
I never endeavor
to fly, I won’t know if I can.
I won’t know if I can’t.
I won’t know
if or whether
a flight I
might fly,
should I choose
to not ever give it a try.

I got If I Never Forever Endeavor out of the library for “N” week for Ruth school. (Nests. Also noodles and noses.) Holly Meade’s book poem perfectly captures the fear of a fledgling about to leave the nest for a first flight and provides a charming metaphor for anyone stepping out with trepidation to try something new. I could see this making a really nice alternative to the now overdone Oh The Places You’ll Go graduation gift.

Poetry Friday is hosted this week at Radio, Rhythm and Rhyme. Why not make it a resolution to have more poetry in your life in 2013? Consider stopping by and participating.

Poetry Friday

In honor of his recent birthday David is currently memorizing this classic poem by A. A. Milne:

The End

When I was one,
I had just begun.

When I was two,
I was nearly new.

When I was three,
I was hardly me.

When I was four,
I was not much more.

When I was five,
I was just alive.

But now I am six,
I’m as clever as clever.
So I think I’ll be six
now for ever and ever.

John memorized the same poem in his first grade year and it’s one that has stuck with him.      He is currently working on another A. A. Milne poem, At the Zoo. Which brings up the question of how do I choose poems for the boys to memorize?

Sometimes I pick a poem related to something else we are studying (John did part of a selection from Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! when we were studying medieval times in history). Sometimes it’s related to a holiday (Christmas Eve). Sometimes we pick a funny or easy poem after working on a more difficult poem (Snowball by Shel Silverstein after In the Bleak Midwinter). Sometimes I pick a poem based on a topic I know they like (birds or baseball or a favorite color). Sometimes I pick a poem from a particular poet I want us to study a little more. As John is getting older, I involve him a bit more in the picking.This last time I handed him the Forget Me Not book and our battered collection of all the poems of A. A. Milne and let him choose. He chose the poem about the zoo which somewhat surprised me but he’s having fun with it. From all that you should get that we don’t really have a system. I think like so much else in schooling and life, this is one of those things you just have to do rather than plan the perfect approach.

As for the process itself, typically I’ll either write the poem on a piece of posterboard and have the boys illustrate it or I’ll type it up for them to have as an easy reference. The first week we aim to read the poem about three times a day together out loud. Then after that we start working on remembering it, working line by line or dividing it into some kind of manageable sections. I’ll have them repeat the part they are working on once a day and each day we try and add a bit more. Then we work on being able to say it clearly and slowly and with expression. I don’t really worry about finishing a poem in a certain amount of time. Sometimes they surprise me and memorize a particular poem very quickly, sometimes we have a lot of other stuff going on and it takes awhile. I’d say on average we spend 5-10  minutes a day on this. It doesn’t take a lot of time.

For those who are are interested in more ideas of poems to try with their kids, this is the list of poems John has memorized.

“The Caterpillar” by Christina Rossetti
selection from “What is Black?” by Mary O’Neill
“We Thank Thee” by Ralph Waldo Emerson
“In the Bleak Mid-Winter” by Christiana Rossetti
“Snowball” by Shel Silverstein
“The Eagle” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“The End” by A. A. Milne
“March” by Anonymous
“Daffodowndilly” by A. A. Milne
“Seaside” by Shirley Hughes
“The Months” by Sara Coleridge
“Squishy Touch” by Shel Silverstein
“Trees” by Joyce Kilmer
“Christmas Eve” by Christina Rossetti
selection from “Lowdy, the Varlet’s Child” by Laura Amy Schlitz
selection from “Horatius” by Thomas Babbington Macaulay
“All Things Bright and Beautiful” by Cecil Alexander
“Casey at the Bat” by Ernest Thayer
“Paul Revere’s Ride” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“Christmas Everywhere” by Phillip Brooks
selection from “The Charge of the Light Brigade” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“A Slash of Blue” by Emily Dickinson

Poetry Friday is hosted this week by Mainely Write.

Read Aloud Thursday: Memorizing Poetry

I have made John memorize poetry since first grade and David has joined him this year as well. It’s not always his favorite activity but it is one from which I see a lot of benefit. Both boys seem to have a natural talent for memorization and find it fairly easy. However, I’ve seen John’s natural ability sharpened by challenging him to memorize more complex and longer poems. John is a bit shy and when we first started memorizing poems he would get very nervous about reciting the poem even for close family members. Now he looks forward to the recitation and often comes up with his own gestures and movements to interpret the poem. As a homeschooler there aren’t a lot of ways to push him out of his comfort zone a bit and get him used to speaking in front of people (something I also find very stressful but that I think is important to be able to do) so I appreciate that poetry recitation is one way to do just that.

Perhaps the most important reason in my mind is for the boys to have an internal voice that speaks poetry as well as prose. Will they remember every poem they memorize? Probably not. However, I hope they remember parts of poems. I hope snatches of phrases like “the crooked sea beneath him crawls” and “His mother only, in her maiden bliss,  worshipped the beloved with a kiss” and “so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow” stick in their hearts and rattle around in their brains.

Figuring out how to find poems to memorize and how to go about the process can be a little overwhelming at first. Which is why I’m happy to recommend this new anthology of poems edited by Mary Ann Hoberman, former children’s poet laureate of the United States (and author of one of our favorite books ever). At the beginning and end she offers some brief thoughts on poetry memorization and some brief guidance on how to go about the process of memorizing. In between is a wide selection of poems of every type organized nicely into categories. There are poems ranging from a few lines to several pages in length. There are funny poems and sad poems and scary poems.  Many great poets are represented including Emily Dickinson, Carl Sandburg, William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost and Hoberman herself. The illustrations by Michael Emberley provide a perfect accompaniment to the poems. My boys often picked a poem to read based on the picture and then found they really liked the poem itself.

Forget Me Nots: Poems to Learn by Heart has been nominated for a Cybil in the poetry category. Tomorrow I’ll share some of the poems we have memorized and a little bit more about how the boys work on learning their poems by heart.

Stop by Read Aloud Thursday at Hope is the Word for more great books to read with your kids.

 

Armchair Cybils

It’s time for one of the few book challenges that I participate in. I’ve been greatly looking forward to the Armchair Cybils challenge at Hope is the Word. This year I’m going to do the same thing I did last year and concentrate on reading as many books as I can in the fiction picture book and nonfiction picture book categories. I’m sure to read a lot of great new books and the bonus is that it encourages me to spend a little extra time reading with my kids. Who can argue with that as a goal?

For this first post I thought I’d copy Amy and make a list of all the Cybils nominated titles we’ve already read.

Fiction Picture Books

And Then It’s Spring by Julie Fogliano
Another Brother by Matthew Cordell
Bea at Ballet by Rachel Isadora
Because Amelia Smiled by David Ezra Stein
Chloe and the Lion by Mac Barnett
Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett
Fancy Nancy and the Mermaid Ballet by Jane O’Connor
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore by William Joyce
Green by Laura Vaccaro Seeger
A Home for Bird by Philip C. Stead
Homer by Elisha Cooper
I Don’t Want to be a Pea by Ann Bonwill
Lady Hahn and Her Seven Friends by Yumi Heo
The Lonely Book by Kate Bernheimer
More by I. C. Springman
Olivia and the Fairy Princesses by Ian Falconer
One Cool Friend by Toni Buzzeo
Otto the Book Bear by Katie Cleminson
Squid and Octopus: Friends for Always by Tao Nyeu
Suppose You Meet a Dinosaur: A First Book of Manners by Judy Sierra
The Cloud Spinner by Michael Catchpool
Two Little Monkeys by Mem Fox
Z is for Moose by Kelly Bingham
Zoe Gets Ready by Bethanie Murguia

Non-Fiction Picture Books

Annie and Helen by Deborah Hopkinson
Balloons over Broadway: The Ture Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade by Melissa Sweet
Bird Talk: What Birds are Saying and Why by Lita Judge
Dolphin Baby by Nicola Davies
Freedom Song: The Story of Henry “Box” Brown by Sally M. Walker
If You Lived Here: Houses of the World by Giles Laroche
Just a Second by Steve Jenkins
Life in the Ocean: The Story of Oceanographer Sylvia Earle by Claire A. Nivola
Looking at Lincoln by Maira Kalman
Mrs. Harkness and the Panda by Alicia Potter
Ocean Sunlight: How Tiny Plants Feed the Seas by Molly Bang
The Beetle Book by Steve Jenkins
The Camping Trip that Changed America by Barb Rosenstock
Those Rebels, John and Tom by Barbara Kerley
We March by Shane W. Evans

Poetry

A Stick is an Excellent Thing: Poems Celebrating Outdoor Play by Marilyn Singer
Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It: False Apology Poems by Gail Carson Levine
The President’s Stuck in the Bathtub: Poems About the Presidents by Susan Katz
Water Sings Blue by Kate Coombs

 Young Adult Fiction

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler

Well. That’s a longer list than I realized. We are lucky to have a great library system with a nice fat new book shelf. Most of the picture books were picked up browsing there. I had planned on writing brief blurbs on the ones of these I hadn’t previously reviewed but this post is getting too long as it is.

There are some glaring absences, most notably in the middle grade categories. Skimming over the list of nominated middle grade books, I found many that I’d l like to read with John or have him read alone, especially in the fantasy category. I may have to think about how to incorporate those into this challenge as well.

Shakespeare with Kids

One of the best things about our homeschool co-op is the very high quality drama program. Kids in roughly grades 1-3 all take drama as one of their required classes. They perform a short skit in an end of the year drama night. This year John was one of the Blind Men in the Blind Men and the Elephant. It’s a fantastic opportunity for kids to have a chance to perform in a nice low-key setting.

The older kids have the opportunity to take acting electives, culminating in a Shakespeare class in the senior high. They put on an extremely high-quality Play Festival at the end of the year that includes one Shakespeare play (slightly shortened) and two shorter plays. It is a wonderful night and exciting for all of those who know the performers.

It’s also been a great way to introduce Shakespeare to my kids. This year and last, we read abridged versions of the play being performed before going to the performance so the boys had a general idea of the storyline. This year the play being performed was Twelfth Night, which has a fairly convoluted plot so it was especially helpful to know the basic outline. One thing I appreciate about the Colville and Williams books as well as the performance that our co-op does, is that they are abridged but not dumbed down. They both include some of Shakespeare’s original language just in a more accessible version.

The Shakespeare Can Be Fun! series by Lois Burdett was new to me this year. Burdett is a teacher who has been doing Shakespeare with her elementary students for many years. These books give the plot of the Shakespeare play but rewritten in rhyming couplets and accompanied by drawings from kids in her class. I appreciate the concept here but I wondered why not introduce kids to Shakespeare using his own language. I love the idea of a teacher who shares her love of Shakespeare with kids, but it just feels like an essential part of the beauty of Shakespeare is missing here.

What has impressed me about seeing the plays at our co-op is that Shakespeare can be fun in the original. They do shorten the play a bit but the language is all original and the staging is fairly traditional. The quality of the actors and the genius of Shakespeare had my 5 year old and 8 year old enthralled. Granted, David started to get really tired around 9:15 but he perked up when the swordfight started. And John absolutely loved it. At one point he was laughing so hard I thought he was going to fall off the pew, at another I looked at him and his eyes were big and shining and he was just mesmerized. I’ve always loved theater and it makes me happy to share that love with him.

Poetry Friday: A River of Words

We continue our study of William Carlos Williams. This biography of him by Jen Bryant was a 2009 Caldecott Honor Book. Bryant manages to tell his story in a way that is interesting and accessible and at the same time somehow echoes the beauty of his poetry.

On his prescription pads, he scribbled a few lines
whenever and wherever he could.
In those precious times,
the rhythm of the river he has rested beside
as a child seemed to guide him. Like the water
that sometimes ran slow, smooth and steady,
and other times came rushing in a hurried flood,
Willie’s lines flowed across the page.

The text is accompanied by visually stunning mixed-media collage illustrations by Melissa Sweet. Sweet is fast becoming one of my favorite illustrators (Balloons Over Broadway, The Boy Who Drew Birds, Jane Yolen’s Baby Bear books). The end of this book includes a note where she talks about the process of making these illustrations. She ended up using old book endpapers as the foundation for her collages. The illustrations often have Williams’ poetry woven into the collage which is a visual representation of the idea of a river of words flowing through Williams’ life.

Related Links:
Melissa Sweet’s website: Homeschoolers take note, there are several activity pages/study guides to go along with some of her books.

A William Carlos Williams tribute by Roger Ebert. Contains a dazzling array of visual responses to his famous poem The Red Wheelbarrow, including many YouTube videos.

The poem In a Motel Parking Lot, Thinking of Dr. Williams by Wendell Berry and finally,  a link to a book about Williams by Berry. 

 Poetry Friday is hosted this week at The Opposite of Indifference.