heartofdakota.com

Are the children suppose to be memorizing the poems?

Thank you,
Linda<><

Hi Linda,
It is not required that they memorize the poems. By the end of the week, my ds could remember a lot of it from the repetition, though.

Laurie

Okay, thanks. My boys don't really care for the poetry part of HOD but I do it with them anyway because I think it is important. Since poetry is not one of their favorite subjects they haven't memorized them (we are on week/Unit 2 ).
Blessings,
Linda<><

Good post! I was wondering the same thing. Love the boards! Linda, thanks for posting the question.

I reward my 7yo with video taping her reciting the peom when she memorizes it. She loves to be recorded so it works as a good incentive for her. She is having great fun picking out what to wear and any props she might want for it. I get a kick watching the video too.

The main focus of the poetry in Beyond is to begin to foster poetry appreciation, as well as basic comprehension of the poem. The poetry box should take about 5 minutes. For boys, especially, I think it is important to adhere to the shorter time allotment, as poetry takes some time for dc to truly learn to appreciate. Both of our sons enjoyed the activity of guessing the title (Day 1) and sequencing the poem after it has been cut apart like a puzzle (Day 2). My artistic child loved drawing the little pictures next to the poem (Day 4), and it was good for my less artistic child to work on strengthening his drawing skills and learn to show his comprehension of the poem visually. My bodily kinesthetic child loved acting out the poem with dramatic actions (Day 3), and it was good for my less bodily kinesthetic child to work on strengthening his expressive skills and learn to show his comprehension of the poem in a bodily kinesthetic way. My auditory child often naturally knew a good portion of the poem and could recite it quite well with no prompting (Day 5). My less auditory child often knew very little of the poem by heart by Day 5, and if he could not remember any of it, I had him read it aloud for me once, and then try to turn it over and recall any lines of it he could. Still, he only would remember a line usually - that was alright - I praised him for that. One of my sons is in RevtoRev now, and the other ds I have mentioned here is in PHFHG. Both LOVE poetry now. It took time to foster, but all of these different activities helped them learn different ways to respond to poetry, and helped them strengthen their weaker areas of responding, and also sharpen their stronger areas of responding. I just wanted to encourage you that my 2 quite different but both ALL boy sons both love poetry now. It has been so worth it - and you know what, I actually love it myself now too. HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

If it weren't for HOD, I don't think I would even do poetry with the kids....especially not my boys, and I wouldn't even know where to start. I'm so glad that HOD has included and done all the work for me. My severely dyslexic ds is getting it. I'm so amazed. Just yesterday we were reading,"The Little House", and I would pause mid sentence or phrase and ds would finish it. I asked him if he understand what the last stanza meant, and he totally got. I have to admit I got a little stumped, because I wasn't sure what phlox was. For some reason, he intuitively knew what it was. I would definitely encourage anyone to keep pressing on. With practice, it gets more enjoyable. Your kids might surprise you.


Tracy