Preparing Questions - poem "To Any Reader"

[Carrie]

Take heart, ladies! Poetry is something I never had any exposure to in my growing up years, and I was less than wild about it when we began reading poetry. But, it does really grow on you over time, and it is a wonderful exercise in comprehension and in inferrence along with being an amazing experience for your senses.

My boys enjoy poetry very much, and I have come to love it through the years right along with them. So, I'll encourage you to perservere!

Blessings,
Carrie

[lovetobehome]

Sue Ann! How hysterical! This made me laugh out loud! I love your honesty about how school really is somtimes....I always feel like I don't measure up when I look at the beautiful blogs and smiling faces and perfect projects...what a breath of fresh air to read about your poetry experience....so many things don't go as smoothly as we think they should. But that is part of the joy, too! Thanks for sharing!

We did this poem this week. This explains how difficult poetry is for us. My kids often don't understand poems and sometimes I don't know the answers to the questions. Are we just an extreme left brain family or what?

me: What was the poet probably remembering from his own childhood as he wrote this poem?
son: "How deaf and blind he was in his garden." what????
me: Why won't the child in the poem hear you?
son: "I said he couldn't hear. That must be why."
me: What do the last 2 lines of the poem mean?
son: "There was a creepy ghost in the garden who flew into the air. Maybe he was scared."
me: How will you be like the child in the poem someday?
son: "I hope I never am. I'm not blind or deaf. I don't like ghosts either."
me: I think the poem was about looking into a book.
son: "Ohhhhhhhh. 'chuckle' No wonder he was flat!"

And, that's a typical poetry discussion at our house. Sometimes my kids just look at me blankly when I read them. Very skilled at poetry, aren't we?

Any helps or insights to help us would be wonderful. The logical brain is a little strong around here!

[DHT1999]

This has been a very helpful thread!

We finally did the written assignment today! We were way late with it. We just kept avoiding it.

But, we did it and it turned out very well. Last year, he started writing a book that he entitled Non-Sense Tales. So, he used the poem to help him write an introduction to his little book. He was so nervous and really lacked confidence but I helped him as much as I could without doing it for him

This is his first stanza:

As from the look-out tower a sentry sees
The enemy's knights prepare for battle,
And march towards the city,
So you may see, if you will look
Out of the look-out tower of this book,
All the characters marching by,
Across the pages, towards the unfolding story.

We are totally new at doing this kind of thing, so I only asked him to focus on imagery and not worry about meter and rhyming words and all that. I'm so proud of him for finishing the assignment!

[Kathleen]

Donna,

I love your little guy's poem! Grant is loving the creative writing assignments in Preparing still. He says it's his favorite thing all week. (And, I never would have guessed that! ) When I read through the assignment for "To Any Reader", I thought it sounded kind of tricky, too, but Grant jumped right in and knew how he wanted to write it. Here is his poem: (He wanted a poem rather than a paragraph.)

Memories of Me

As from the house my mother sees
Me playing in the hackberry tree,
Sometimes I climb way up high,
Almost in the big blue sky.
Sometimes I play way down low,
In the grass or in the snow.
I’m bouncing on the trampoline
Or swinging on the faded swing.
I hear a lot of birds and dogs
And even sometimes croaking frogs.
I jump and run and laugh and splash
Always ready for a shower in a flash.
But this won’t last forever long,
When I grow up I will be gone.
When I have kids, I will see,
Them climbing in the hackberry tree.


He's even writing poetry right now in his free time because I only let him write 3 stanzas about the moon this morning! I am now a huge advocate of HOD's poetry (and we only started last year). I was going to skip it because I did not have a good experience with poetry growing up...but my kids and I all love it now!

Kathleen

[playschool]

Glad I came upon this. As I read this today my dd looked at me like she does when she is frustrated because she doesn't understand something. I kind of understood the poem, but needed some more explanation. Now I can finally explain the meaning of the poem to my children. Thanks, Daisy! I am so glad I found this thread. Someone mentioned that their dc thought that the last lines of the poem was talking about a ghost. My dd (12 year old) thought the same thing. LOL Thanks a bunch!