Tag: Elementary School

Poetry Tuesday

Poem Study: Eletelephony

Hannah Spuler

Let’s read a poem and study it together!

edit elephone elephant-3435380_1920

Not sure how to study a poem? Here are some ideas! Choose one or all of these:

  1. Read aloud and enjoy the poem
  2. Neatly write out your favorite stanza for handwriting practice or…
  3. Copy and paste the poem into your word processor and print it out
  4. Draw a picture about the poem

  5. Circle or color-code the words that rhyme!

  6. Read more about the author’s life
  7. Share with someone you love <3


Eletelephony

Once there was an elephant,
Who tried to use the telephant—
No! No! I mean an elephone
Who tried to use the telephone—
(Dear me! I am not certain quite
That even now I’ve got it right.)
Howe’er it was, he got his trunk
Entangled in the telephunk;
The more he tried to get it free,
The louder buzzed the telephee—
(I fear I’d better drop the song
Of elephop and telephong!)

~Laura Elizabeth Richards

 

Hungry for more? Check out this week’s…

Poetry Activity (for kids, adults, and everyone in between): Concrete (Shape) Poem

Advanced Poetry Lesson: Sonnets, Week 2

Poetry Tuesday

Poem Study: Summer in the South

Hannah Spuler

Let’s read a poem and study it together!

edit summer in south sunset-2488635_1920 copy

Not sure how to study a poem? Here are some ideas! Choose one or all of these:

  1. Read aloud and enjoy the poem
  2. Neatly write out your favorite stanza for handwriting practice or…
  3. Copy and paste the poem into your word processor and print it out
  4. Draw a picture about the poem

  5. Underline words in the poem that describe what the author sees, feels, tastes, smells, or hears.

  6. Read more about the author’s life
  7. Share with someone you love <3

Summer in the South

The Oriole sings in the greening grove
As if he were half-way waiting,
The rosebuds peep from their hoods of green,
Timid, and hesitating.
The rain comes down in a torrent sweep
And the nights smell warm and piney,
The garden thrives, but the tender shoots
Are yellow-green and tiny.
Then a flash of sun on a waiting hill,
Streams laugh that erst were quiet,
The sky smiles down with a dazzling blue
And the woods run mad with riot.

~Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872 – 1906)

 

Hungry for more? Check out this week’s…

Poetry Activity (for kids, adults, and everyone in between): Five Senses Poem

Advanced Poetry Lesson: Sonnets (Week 1 of 2)

Poetry Tuesday

Poem Study: The Owl and the Pussycat

Hannah Spuler

Let’s read a poem and study it together!

edward-lear-1823642.png
Edward Lear’s Illustration of The Owl and the Pussycat

Not sure how to study a poem? Here are some ideas! Choose one or all of these:

  1. Read aloud and enjoy the poem
  2. Neatly write out your favorite stanza for handwriting practice or…
  3. Copy and paste the poem into your word processor and print it out
  4. Draw a picture about the poem

  5. Circle or color-code the words that rhyme!

  6. Read more about the author’s life
  7. Share with someone you love <3

Since we read one of Edward Lear’s limericks in the Poetry Activity, I thought it would be fun to read another one of his famous poems!

The Owl and the Pussycat

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea
    In a beautiful pea-green boat;
They took some honey, and plenty of money
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Owl looked up to the moon above,
And sang to a small guitar,
“O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love!
What a beautiful Pussy you are,—
You are,
What a beautiful pussy you are!”

Pussy said to the Owl, “You elegant fowl!”
    How wonderful sweet you sing!
Oh, let us be married,— too long we have tarried,—
But what shall we do for a ring?”
They sailed away for a year and a day
To the land where the Bong-tree grows,
And there in a wood a piggy-wig stood
With a ring in the end of his nose,—
His nose,
With a ring in the end of his nose.

“Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one willing
    Your ring?” Said the piggy, “I will.”
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined upon mince and slices of quince,
    Which they ate with a runcible spoon,
And hand in hand on the edge of the sand
They danced by the light of the moon,—
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

~Edward Lear (1812-1888)

 

Hungry for more? Check out this week’s…

Poetry Activity (for kids, adults, and everyone in between): Limerick fill-in-the-blank

Advanced Poetry Lesson: Limericks, Week 2

Poetry Tuesday

Poem Study: The Arrow and the Song

Hannah Spuler

Let’s read a poem and study it together!

edit arrow archer-2345211_1920

Not sure how to study a poem? Here are some ideas! Choose one or all of these:

  1. Read aloud and enjoy the poem
  2. Neatly write out your favorite stanza for handwriting practice or…
  3. Copy and paste the poem into your word processor and print it out
  4. Draw a picture about the poem

  5. Circle or color-code the words that rhyme!

  6. Read more about the author’s life
  7. Share with someone you love <3


The Arrow and the Song

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroken;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

~Henry W. Longfellow

 

Hungry for more? Check out this week’s…

Poetry Activity (for kids, adults, and everyone in between): Analyzing Poems

Advanced Poetry Lesson: Limericks (Week 1 of 2)

Poetry Tuesday

Poem Study: The Sun Has Set, or Bed in Summer

Hannah Spuler

Let’s read a poem and study it together!

sunset
©Hannah Spuler, 2018

Not sure how to study a poem? Here are some ideas! Choose one or all of these:

  1. Read aloud and enjoy the poem
  2. Neatly write out your favorite stanza for handwriting practice or…
  3. Copy and paste the poem into your word processor and print it out
  4. Draw a picture about the poem

  5. Circle or color-code the words that rhyme!

  6. Read more about the author’s life
  7. Share with someone you love <3

 

The Sun Has Set

The sun has set, and the long grass now
Waves dreamily in the evening wind;
And the wild bird has flown from that old gray stone
In some warm nook a couch to find.

In all the lonely landscape round
I see no light and hear no sound,
Except the wind that far away
Come sighing o’er the healthy sea.

~Emily Jane Brontë

 

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?

~Robert Louis Stevenson

 

Hungry for more? Check out this week’s…

Poetry Activity (for kids, adults, and everyone in between): Acrostic Poem

Advanced Poetry Lesson: Ballads

Poetry Tuesday

Poem Study: Bear in There

Hannah Spuler

Let’s read a poem and study it together!

edit polar-bear-404314_1920

Not sure how to study a poem? Here are some ideas! Choose one or all of these:

  1. Read aloud and enjoy the poem
  2. Neatly write out your favorite stanza for handwriting practice or…
  3. Copy and paste the poem into your word processor and print it out
  4. Draw a picture about the poem

  5. Circle or underline the alliterations!

  6. Read more about the author’s life
  7. Share with someone you love <3


Bear in There

There’s a polar bear
In our Frigidaire–
He likes it ’cause it’s cold in there.
With his seat in the meat
And his face in the fish
And his big hairy paws
In the buttery dish,
He’s nibbling the noodles,
He’s munching the rice,
He’s slurping the soda,
He’s licking the ice.
And he lets out a roar
If you open the door.
And it gives me a scare
To know he’s in there–
That polary bear
In our Fridgitydaire.

by Shel Silverstein

Hungry for more? Check out this week’s…

Poetry Activity (for kids, adults, and everyone in between): Alliteration Poem

Advanced Poetry Lesson: Ballads, (Week 1 of 2)

Poetry Tuesday

Poem Study: The Brook

Hannah Spuler

Let’s read a poem and study it together!

the brook scenic-787617_1920

Not sure how to study a poem? Here are some ideas! Choose one or all of these:

  1. Read aloud and enjoy the poem
  2. Neatly write out your favorite stanza for handwriting practice or…
  3. Copy and paste the poem into your word processor and print it out
  4. Draw a picture about the poem
  5. Circle or color-code the words that rhyme. (Learn about rhyme here!)
  6. Read more about the author’s life
  7. Share with someone you love <3


The Brook
(excerpt)

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river;
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel
With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeams dance
Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses.

And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river;
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

By Alfred Lord Tennyson


Hungry for more? Check out this week’s…

Poetry Activity (for kids, adults, and everyone in between): Fill-in-the-blank poem

Advanced Poetry Lesson: Odes, Week 2

Poetry Tuesday

Poem Study: My Shadow

Hannah Spuler

Let’s read a poem and study it together!

edit shadow little-2176130_1920

Not sure how to study a poem? Here are some ideas! Choose one or all of these:

  1. Read aloud and enjoy the poem
  2. Neatly write out your favorite stanza for handwriting practice or…
  3. Copy and paste the poem into your word processor and print it out
  4. Draw a picture about the poem
  5. Circle or color-code the words that rhyme. (Learn about rhyme here!)
  6. Read more about the author’s life
  7. Share with someone you love <3

My Shadow

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow—
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there’s none of him at all.

He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close besides me, he’s a coward, you can see;
I’d think shame to stick to nurse as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

~Robert Louis Stevenson


Hungry for more? Check out…

Poetry Activity (for kids, adults, and everyone in between): Write Your Own Nursery Rhymes

Advanced Poetry Lesson: Odes (Week 1 of 2)

Friday Story Share

Friday Story Share: Robert and the Kitties

Hannah Spuler

And the winner for this Friday’s Storyshare is… Marigrace S.! Thank you for sharing your story, Marigrace! I loved every bit of it, especially the happy ending.

I hope this story inspires you to write your own!

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Robert and the Kitties
by Marigrace S, 1st grade

One summer day, a little kitty named Jack was snuggling in his owner’s house. His owner’s name was Marigrace. She loved her cat.

One day Jack ran outside to play. Marigrace went with him. They played on a cat toy.

Then all of a sudden, a mean dog ran toward them!

robert the dog

Jack climbed off the toy and went back into Marigrace’s house because he was scared of the terrible dog. The dog was trying to attack the kitty!

Marigrace felt so sad and rushed in with Jack to protect him. The dog tried to get in, but Marigrace wouldn’t let him.

He scratched some paint off the door trying to get in! Then, all of a sudden, the dog rushed to another house because the dog saw another kitty!

The mean dog went in through a back door which had been left open and found the kitty inside the house. Marigrace saw all of this happen and rushed to the house. She got the kitty in her arms and ran as fast as she could to the owner, whose name was Heath.

Heath came and said, “Bad dog!” and he locked the mean dog in his cage. Heath did not let the dog outside to play for 4 days. The mean dog’s name was Robert and he was sad he had been mean. He just wanted to play with the kitties. So the owner said, “You may play outside, but you must be gentle to the kitties.”

From then on, Robert was so gentle. He and the two kitties were friends.

jack and robert