autumn poem

Poetry. It is one of our most beloved lessons and is often read daily in our home. One of our poetry selections this month is from A Journey Through Time in Verse and Rhyme and has become quite familiar to us after reading it annually over the last few years. It really speaks to what is happening right outside of our window this time of year. 

Just today, as we sat at our table working on some math, we watched a blustery gust of wind sweep away what seemed like a whole tree-ful of orange leaves across our front yard. It certainly left our maple emptier and filled our neighborhood with a delightful scattering of autumn color.

Autumn Poem

Fall, leaves, fall;

Die, flowers, away;

Lengthen night and shorten day.

Every leaf speaks bliss to me

Fluttering from the Autumn tree

I shall smile when wreaths of snow

Blossom where the rose should grow

I shall sing when night's decay

Ushers in a drearier day.

Emily Bronte

advent

Advent

Now the twilight of the year
Comes, and Christmas draweth near.
See, across the Advent sky
How the clouds move quietly.
Earth is waiting, wrapt in sleep,
Waiting in a silence deep.
Birds are hid in bush and reed
Flowers are sleeping in their seed.

Through the woodland to and fro
Silent-footed creatures go.
Hedgehog curled in prickly ball
Burrows 'neath the leaves that fall.
Man and beast and bird and flower
Waiting for the midnight hour
Waiting for the Christ-child's birth
Christ who made the heaven and earth.

by Ann Ellerton

morning circle

We've added something new this year to start our day of homeschooling. You might call it circle time or morning poetry and song time. It's a time to come together after breakfast and morning chores to be together- usually seated on the living room floor- to have a group activity to start our day off. It has been so enjoyable to start our school time this way and really brings a lot of joy into our home as we start our day of schooling.

I have typically been starting off with asking Nicolas what day it is by reading our blackboard in the kitchen upon which I have written something like this:

Today is
Monday,
October 18,
2010

along with a seasonal picture drawn in chalk (this month I've drawn a tree with it's branches spreading across the board and it's leaves falling).

It has really helped him in getting a sense of the days of the week and the flow of the days in each month (and eventually the months of the year). These are all things that he has abstractly learned over the last year or two but this morning ritual is really bringing meaning to the unfolding of the calendar year for him.

We then read two poems- one with a seasonal theme and one other that I choose based on whatever strikes me as lively. Over the last few weeks, I have chosen poems that speak to the changing of the seasons from summer to fall for our first poem and other poems that are action verses, tongue twisters or relate to fables or animals for our second poem.

I am loving A Journey Through Time in Verse and Rhyme and have been using it for the last six weeks to choose our morning poetry. Since we are reading the same two poems each day for five days in a row it has been easy to commit a lot of the poems to memory just from hearing them repetitively. There is something magical about watching your children repeat a poem with you and feel excited as they sense what words are coming next in our morning poems.

A few of my favorites have been Working by Molly De Havas, Autumn Poem by Emily Bronte and Class One Song by Trevor Smith Westgarth.

Working
Molly De Havas

The Farmer is sowing his seed,
in the field he is sowing his seed.
The Reaper is cutting the hay,
in the meadow he is cutting the hay.
The Gardener is digging the ground,
in the garden is digging the ground.
The Woodman is chopping the trees,
in the forest is chopping the trees.
The Fisher is drawing his nets,
in the sea he is drawing his nets.
The Builder is laying the bricks,
in the wall he is laying the bricks.
The Cobbler is mending the shoes,
in the shop he is mending the shoes.
The Miller is grinding the corn,
in the mill he is grinding the corn.
The Baker is kneading the dough,
in the kitchen he is kneading the dough.
The Mother is rocking her child,
in her arms she is rocking her child.

Autumn Poem
Emily Bronte

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.

I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night's decay
Ushers in a drearier day.

Each week I choose a song that we can all sing too. I have chosen songs of praise, songs that we can clap, stomp or bring our own names into and this week, songs that we can sing in the round. I have to say that I am thoroughly impressed with my nine year old's ability to hold her own part in round singing and it has been so great to sing with my children each day. She has practiced it before in her chorus classes and a drama class but it only seems that just now she is getting the concept of holding her tune against another and has the concentration to keep her part with perfect time and rhythm.

There is something very natural to have this time together before starting up with more our more academic lessons and is something I would certainly encourage you to try if you struggling with diving right in to those 'tough lessons' first thing in the morning!

halloween night

A little Halloween art from my pair of author/illustrator children. They sat down a couple of weeks ago to compose a poem about trick-or-treat and took their task quite seriously. Sophia wrote the majority of the poem and she asked Nicolas to draw a picture to show what an autumn night might look like.

On Halloween night, the kids are in sight
And everyone will not be sleeping.
The kids run around the entire town
And the grown-ups just sit around waiting.
Six little feet enter the street,
The leaves blow around
And the children no frown.
What a Halloween night that was!

-poem by Sophia and Nicolas
October 2009

Loftier Thoughts Than Toilet Training

We have been reading from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse (the version complied by Ionaand Peter Opie- don't you just love those names?) this week and are already feeling very inspired by the poems we've chosen.

I also borrowed another book chosen and edited by this couple called A Nursery Companion. This is a spectacular book filled with “three metrical alphabets with the ‘fat black letters’ that Dickens admired”, “a pictorial grammar lesson” that is “strewed with flowers”, “a rhyming history of the kings and queens of England” and is a book that was written during a time when “gaiety and color were admitted to the nursery”. If you love the early years of 19th-century England, than this book is for you (oh, and for your children).

Yesterday, Sophia and I read Caterpillar by Christina Rossetti...

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.

And today we read Laughing Song by William Blake which ends with...

When the painted birds laugh in the shade,
When our table with cherries and nuts is spread:
Come live, and be merry, and join with me
To sing the sweet chorus of 'Ha, ha, he!'

No matter what your circumstances are- mine being the beginning of potty training my toddler (we've got an assembly line of pails and wipes in our downstairs bathroom right now) and attempting to squeeze some academic time into the lives of two children who are sick with spring fever this week- one's mind and spirit can always be elevated to the (more) beautiful (than toilet training) aspects of creation and nature and humanity simply by reading a poem or two.

sunny bedtime

Some of my most vivid memories from my childhood have to do with bedtime. In particular, going to bed during the summer.
I can remember lying in bed looking up at the shadows from cars speed across and around the tops of my walls like it was a race track. I can remember feeling hot. I can remember not feeling tired and most off all, I can remember the feel of that sunny room; a bright place, when it was supposed to be dark.
I always felt like my parents were tricking me during these summer night bedtimes. How could it be time to end my day, when the sights and sounds of what I knew my day to be were still present?
Well, recently, I have found a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson from "A Child's Garden of Verses" that perfectly portrays my thoughts about the summer bedtimes from long ago.

Bed In Summer
In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people's feet
Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?

I read this poem with my children the other night. They sat silently after I finished. Perhaps they have not felt the feelings about the injustice and confusion of going to bed while it's still light outside (they are tucked snugly in at 7:30pm each night!). Maybe they have been quite content about going to bed while the noises of the day are still echoing in the neighborhood. Maybe I have just given them something to think about. I wonder if it will come back to bite me?