Nursery Rhyme Joy

Yesterday, Abigail and Anna sat on the couch singing Nursery Rhymes together.

One of the best things about Nursery Rhymes is that they are easy to learn and also easy to remember from a visual prompt, such as a picture book illustration. Each time Abigail turned the page, she would ask Anna, "Do you know this one?" Most of the time, Anna would burst into singing immediately.
In this case, neither knew the rhyme, but Anna said, "That's okay Abi, we can still look at the pictures."I love a book with hundreds of pages and a picture on every page! (It makes me wonder if that was the real reason why psalters had all those intricate pictures in the margins: to give the kids something to look at while they sat with their parents in church meetings, through long elaborate liturgies, before Sunday School was invented.)

There is no frigate like a book

I love this poem by Emily Dickson which Ali posted last Friday. Do check out her post, she has found a lovely apropos illustration as well.

A Book
by Emily Dickinson

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

Weekly Reports 2008:34 & 35

Our last two weeks went well but there are big changes afoot and I will have to post about them another time. For now, this is a report on the last two weeks (even though it's half way through week 36 now!):

Literacy
Joshua is struggling through the much longer and increasingly difficult fifth set of Bob Books. He is finding the two vowels in combination graphemes (such as i_e and oa) really difficult to keep in his head all at once. I am trying to let him take it slowly but I could see he was needing some down time so in week 35 I gave him incidental reading only rather than persist with the readers. (We're back to them in week 36 though.)
Anna finished the third set of Bob Books in week 34 and after a big celebration, she also had week 35 off from readers as a reward. She's back in to them this week as well. She is doing much better with learning the multiple-letter graphemes. I am so proud of her!

Literature
We all thoroughly enjoyed reading The Wizard of Oz together. It did get tense at times (well, Joshua follows after me when it comes to being frightened by the least thrilling plot devices known to man) but I appreciated the way that the majority of problems were solved within the chapter or the one following (well, except for Dorothy finding her way home, of course, which had to take the entire book or there would have been no story). So even though Joshua was jumping on the couch over some bits, he would always be happy with the resolution at the end of our reading times.
We began to re-read Adventures of the Wishing Chair by Enid Blyton, which we read and enjoyed last year. The kids are liking it and it's a nice simple segue to our next book, Five Children and It by Edith Nesbitt, which has a similar theme of wishes being granted.

Science and Geography
The kids and I have thoroughly enjoyed reading about the animals of Asia and can now tell the difference between an Asian elephant an one from Africa. They can also tell whether a Pongo pygmaeus specimen is male or female. Can you? (Answer at the bottom of the post.) We also enjoyed reading about Siberian and Bengal tigers and checking out the tiger pages on the National Geographic Kids website. We watched the National Geographic DVD on the Siberian Tiger again as well.
One of our favourite things has been reading Asian folktales. In particular, we have enjoyed Children of the Dragon: Selected Tales from Vietnam by Sherry Garland illus Trina Schart Hyman, which has five delightful Vietnamese tales accompanied by a brief explanation of some of the elements of the tale (such as explaining the role of water buffalo in Vietnamese farming life, or the celebration of the moon festival, which was only recently celebrated by the Asian people at our church). We have also enjoyed Chinese Fables Remembered as told by Miwa Kurita, illus Saoko Mitsukuri, edited by Miyoko Matsutani. The two tales in this book have good morals (one promotes kindness and the other warns of the dangers of boasting). These were shorter stories than those in the Vietnamese book but nonetheless very enjoyable.
We completed a homemade atlas page on Asia courtesy of National Geographic's printable atlas site. (I think I am becoming a National Geographic groupie).

Mathematics
Anna is catching on to the idea of addition almost as fast as Joshua now and they had no problem with the lessons on writing addition sums. I am making sure I begin each and every lesson with a concrete representation of the addition sums we are learning about, and that is helping a lot. We're using fluorescent pegs, colourful plastic milk bottle lids, single Megabloks in various colours, and anything else I can think of as counters.

Poetry
We've just memorised "Whole Duty of Children" by Robert Louis Stevenson together and it raised a lot of questions. Joshua was outraged at the idea that children should only speak when someone speaks to them, but I explained it means that they should always respond when someone speaks to them. He was okay with that. Reciting it together was fun, despite my initial concerns that it was too "preachy". I am beginning to love poetry again, but mostly the poems with strong rhythms. I just don't get modern poetry.

Q: How can you tell an adult male Pongo pygmaeus from a female?
A: Pongo pygmaeus is the species of orangutan that is found in Borneo. (The Sumatran species is Pongo abelii.) The adult male has large black cheek pads and a bulging black throat pouch, which are both absent in the adult female.

Weekly Report 2008:33

Last week went very well, almost completely according to plan. Amazing!

Circle Time
We read stories of Joseph and his brothers and what happened in Egypt. We left out the bit about Potiphar's wife, but didn't have time for it even if it had passed the toddler-level censor. I overheard Anna singing the first four lines of "How deep the Father's love for us..." this morning so the first verse must have sunk in. I do think it's a bit slow for them, they don't seem as keen on it as the previous two or three songs. Jeff has been leading Circle Time a lot lately and I really appreciate his succinct applications and prayers at the end. We're learning two memory verses at the moment: Phil 2:14-16a (to counteract whinging) and Genesis 45:8 "So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God..." from the story of Joseph.

Literacy
Joshua is reading through the fifth (last) box of Bob Books half a book at a time, so he read book 3 and 4 last week. Anna has begun reading from the third set and is steaming ahead having read 1-4 last week. She seems to be picking up sight words (phonetic, but not using rules she's learnt yet) such as "was" and "saw" much faster than Joshua did. I am not sure if this reflects her better blending skill or her greater familiarity with the flow of words in stories. Either way, it definitely reflects her fascination with stories.
We didn't manage to do penmanship on Monday but the rest of the week went okay. I have increased the amount of writing Joshua is doing and it may be a bit to demanding for him. He's doing six lines (large writing, they take up a page with my three lines of writing to copy) or less. He did a fantastic narration of Dot and the Kangaroo on Tuesday. Anna didn't do a narration of it, we just couldn't fit it in. Oh well.

Literature
The kids are loving The Wizard of Oz. We read chapters 6 through to 14 last week, even with Joshua going out to Anchor Boys and Karate different nights of the week.
We picked up some picture books of Asian folk tales from the library on Tuesday and the kdis all adore Tikki Tikki Tembo ("retold" by Arlene Mosel and illustrated by Blair Lent), which I picked out because I remember it from my childhood. I have also ordered The Five Chinese Brothers (by Claire Huchet Bishop and illustrated by Kurt Wiese, who also illustrated The Story About Ping) through interlibrary loan.
The kids can now recite "Toad's Last Little Song" well, and really enjoy it. Even Abigail asks to recite poetry at other times, such as at bedtime. I'm so glad I thought of adding this into our day, because poetry has become a wonderful thing to share together.

Mathematics
We've begun Earlybird Mathematics 2B! We did the first half of the first "lesson", which is quite a long one. We're doing one page a day (three times a week, we do something different on Friday) and it seems to be moving very slowly with single-digit addition, but I am going as slowly as the book rather than let them move quickly because there's no reason to rush and I want to be sure they both get it. So far, they've had no problems with understanding what the + and = signs mean, so I'm pleased with that. We did a lot of extra problems on the magnetic sketchpad and our little white board, which they both enjoyed. Joshua can handle bigger sums in his head, I've noticed. Anna is fine with addends of 1-3 but she struggles if there's a 4 in the problem (mentally, with an image or fingers or whatever she does fine).
I've been trying to do addition sums with the kids when we've been out and about as well, with real objects to add together to help them with more examples.

Science/Geography
We went to the library on Tuesday and checked out a few books on Asian animals and folktales. I couldn't find anything on Pandas to my dismay but did find a book on the Siberian Tiger which we have a DVD about. We spent a day or two looking through the kids' atlases pages on Asia, and read a few books of folktales. I want the kids to be able to identify Indonesia and Singapore in particular because their Grandpa lives in Jakarta (Indonesia) and their Aunt immigrated to Australia from Singapore when she married Jeff's brother, so we have family connections with those countries. Of course, they've heard a lot about China in the last few weeks with the Olympics, so we're learning a bit about that as well.
Joshua and Anna went on a "bug hunt" with Joshua's magnifying glass one afternoon and came back inside having drawn some cute pictures (crayon, hardly any detail) of a spider, a beetle and an ant. Then Joshua treated Jeff and I to a spontaneous narration about insects, including the insight that "ants live in burrow nests underground. They like to burrow in cracks between the bricks. They prefer to burrow in sand, and especially like orange sand." This insight was based on the large number of ant sand piles we have in our undercover area outside, where there is obviously orange bricklayer sand underneath the bricks, rather than the white-grey sand of the yard and sandpit areas. The orange ant piles on the brown bricks are much more obvious than any ant piles elsewhere in the yard. What an investigator!

Craft
Pipe cleaner and plastic spoon insects, with the idea courtesy of Play School, were the hit of the week craft-wise. Abigail loved being able to join in with the tracing page as well. Her efforts were enough to tell me she has quite a way to go developmentally before she'll be able to join the bigger kids for penmanship! (Not that I didn't know that already.)

Outside Time
I have loved the warmer weather and sunny skies of the last week and the kids have flourished in their outside times. I am so glad we can finally get back out. They are settling much better at bedtime as a result of all the time outside and we've had a few more chats with neighbours than usual because they're out in their yards as well.

Evening Actvities
Joshua enjoyed both Anchor Boys and Karate this week. I was greatly saddened on Friday to realise I have another two badges to sew on - one for Joshua and one for Jeff for their Karate uniforms. Somehow it slipped my mind previously... I have no idea how!

A poem by Edith Nesbit

From the dedication page of Five Children and It:

My Lamb, you are so very small,
You have not learned to read at all,
Yet never a printed book withstands
The urgence of your dimpled hands.
So, though this book is for yourself,
Let mother keep it on the shelf
Till you can read. O days that pass,
That day will come too soon, alas!

This is exactly how I feel about so many of our books!

(Image from Dymocks.)

Poetry

We have two Literature Read Aloud periods scheduled in our day, with our Science lesson often incorporating Read Alouds from non-fiction books as well. I have just decided to take advantage of the longer (45min) Lit RA in our morning to include some poetry , more frequently and deliberately than we have in the past.

I bought The Harp and Laurel Wreath by Laura Berquist at the trade fair a few weeks ago and we also have RL Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses (although our version only has 16 poems - it's a Little Golden Book edition - I am not sure whether this is the complete book or not). The kids love our poetry collections by AA Milne, When We were Very Young and Now We Are Six and I love a collection of Australian poems which I have had since I was a child, called Someone is Flying Balloons. I also have Once Upon a Time, a rather eclectic collection of the favourite poetry of famous kids' authors. My favourite book of poetry for all time, the hilarious Sister Madge's Book of Nuns by Doug MacLeod, also has sat on my shelf since I was in primary school. So I have more than enough collections of poetry to begin with.

My plan is to read a few poems each day and have one repeated each day (probably as the first of the day's set) until we have it memorised. Our first poem for memorisation is "Ducks' Ditty", which comes from none of these collections. It is from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, as composed by the Water Rat. Since we've been watching this on DVD a few times over the last week I have heard both Anna and Joshua using a phrase here or there from the poem in their play. Obviously, just from hearing it aloud on the movie they have already begun to learn it. I think seeing it on the screen has endeared it to their hearts in a way that my reading it at the dinner table several months ago did not, probably due to their age and comprehension. Such is life! Here is a snippet from the book, to show you the poem in its context:

The Rat was sitting on the river bank, singing a little song. He had just composed it himself, so he was very taken up with it, and would not pay proper attention to Mole or anything else. Since early morning he had been swimming in the river, in company with his friends the ducks. And when the ducks stood on their heads suddenly, as ducks will, he would dive down and tickle their necks, just under where their chins would be if ducks had chins, till they were forced to come to the surface again in a hurry, spluttering and angry and shaking their feathers at him, for it is impossible to say quite all you feel when your head is under water. At last they implored him to go away and attend to his own affairs and leave them to mind theirs. So the Rat went away, and sat on the river bank in the sun, and made up a song about them, which he called

“Ducks’ Ditty”

All along the backwater,
Through the rushes tall,
Ducks are a-dabbling,
Up tails all!

Ducks’ tails, drakes’ tails,
Yellow feet a-quiver,
Yellow bills all out of sight
Busy in the river!

Slushy green undergrowth
Where the roach swim –
Here we keep our larder,
Cool and full and dim.

Everyone for what he likes!
We like to be
Heads down, tails up,
Dabbling free!

High in the blue above,
Swifts whirl and call –
We are down a-dabbling
Up tails all!

I loved this poem when I first read it, for the lyrical way it presents the everyday doings of the ducks and the onomatopoeic descriptions ("slushy green undergrowth"). The kids love the rhythm and pattern, which is due to the short lines, simple ABCB rhyme and the alliterative use of the [d] sound.

We may just follow this with "Toad's Last Little Song", from the same source, which has a completely different - but no less enjoyable - feel to it. Here it is, again within its context:

At last he got up, locked the door, drew the curtains across the windows, collected all the chairs in the room and arranged them in a semi-circle, and took up his position in front of them, swelling visibly. Then he bowed, coughed twice, and, letting himself go, with uplifted voice he sang, to the enraptured audience that his imagination so clearly saw:

The Toad – came – home!
There was panic in the parlours and bowling in the halls,
There was crying in the cow-sheds and shrieking in the stalls,
When the Toad – came – home!

When the Toad – came – home!
There was smashing in of window and crashing in of door,
There was chivvying of weasles that fainted on the floor,
When the Toad – came – home!

Bang! Go the drums!
The trumpeters are tooting and the soldiers are saluting,
And the canon they are shooting and the motor-cars are hooting,
As the – Hero – comes!

Shout – Hoo-ray!
And let each one of the crowd try and shout it very loud,
In honour of an animals of whom you’re justly proud,
For it’s Toad’s – great – day!

He sang this very loud, with great unction and expression; and when he had done, he sang it all over again.
Then he heaved a deep sigh; a long, long, long sigh.
Then he dipped his hairbrush in the water-jug, parted his hair in the middle, and plastered it down very straight and sleek on each side of his face; and, unlocking the door, went quietly down the stairs to greet his guests, who he knew must be assembling in the drawing room.

As an aside from all this business about poetry, this poem provides an example of one of the things I don't like about adaptations. Anna has one of The Wind in the Willows, and it includes both of these poems. The first is pretty much surrounded by the same text, although apparently "it was all in good fun and eventually the Rat left them to get on with his own business." Not quite how the ducks considered the matter in Grahame's original text. The second of these poems is wrenched out of its original placement. Originally, Toad sang to himself and his imagined listeners prior to the banquet held in his honour, at which, and thereafter, he behaves with humble decorum. It was Toad's last hurrah - privately given but never the less heartfelt. Its position in the narrative is a sign that Toad is giving up his bravado. In Anna's adaption, Toad sings his Last Little Song while he is walking in the woods days after the banquet, and he is heard by the animals of the wood. This therefore becomes a sign that the Toad has not learned his lesson, that he is still unrepentant and proud of heart. This gives a very different ending to the two books. Coming from a Christian perspective, one which considers it important that Toad has at last been made aware of his sin and has openly repented, I cannot help but be disappointed with the adaption. Mind you, Anna loves perusing the black-line pictures of the adapted paperback novel, telling the story to herself. The hardback unabridged version, complete with illustrations by Robert Ingpen, is a bit big and unwieldy for that task.

One other collection of poems I have is Doing Bombers off the Jetty! (which, I am proud to say, is named after one of my own childhood poems which is included within it's covers). This book is actually a poetry-writing curriculum by Peter McFarlane and Rory Harris which provides models for writing poetry (often from child authors, like myself) and then gives suggestions for how to teach children to write their own poetry in a similar style. I had almost forgotten I had this book until I checked out my poetry shelves, and just writing this post I am becoming enthusiastic about using ideas from it with my children when they get a bit older. How surprised they will be to see my maiden name under a poem in a real book!

Poetry Study

This afternoon I was looking for something different to tide the kids over with for Read Alouds, until Abigail receives her birthday present, which will probably be our next longer book to read together. I thought I might use the next few days to read some poetry with the children.

The Lion Children's Treasury of Classic Verse, compiled by David Self, is a wonderful collection of some of the shorter poems by great poets, from John Barbour, Lady Julian of Norwich and Sir Walter Raleigh to Robert Louis Stevenson and Wilfred Owen. It is organised by topic with a thematic flow from "And God Made the World" to "The Voyage of Life".

From the poems we read today (we began at the beginning of the book), I especially enjoyed The Owl, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892).

The Owl

When cats run home and light is come,
And dew is cold upon the ground,
And the far-off stream is dumb,
And the whirring sail goes round,
And the whirring sail goes round;
Alone and warming his five wits,
The white owl in the belfry sits.

When merry milkmaids click the latch,
And rarely[1] smells the new-mown hay,
And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch
Twice or thrice his roundelay,[2]
Twice or thrice his roundelay;
Alone and warming his five wits,
The white owl in the belfry sits.

[1] rarely: remarkably well
[2] roundelay: song

I have printed out this poem. I think I might just have Joshua read it next week and see if we cannot memorise it. He might even use it for copywork. Hmm, maybe a week of poetry might be a good idea, now that we've finished Wind in the Willows.