Poetry

We've been having a little poetry around here. And I decided that I need to video the kids before they lose their little kid way of talking! When I took this poor quality video on my camera, I foolishly forgot that the video would come out sideways when I held the camera that way. But my darling spouse spent a bit of time on it, and managed to turn my videos around! Nevermind the three hours it took to upload them, and now you can share in the fun!

Part of our Language Arts curriculum (that I luuuuuuuv!) includes learning and reciting poetry. Properly. Fold the hands, don't lean, look out at your audience, speak slowly and clearly and state the name and author of said poem. Lucas does great, and Julia does great for only doing this twice a week with us. She's gone three mornings and the boys get more opportunities for repetition. Lucky for her, she's a guru for remembering words to things. She may have heard the words wrong... ("time to kangaroo downs, fort" and "call 9-1-1, the-e-e-e-en call yourself") but she's our most talented girl for word memory. Lucas gets the prize for most words used in a day. =) Aidan does pretty good, but he's still so "baby" that it's the cutest thing ever to hear these grown up words come out of his mouth. And he has a ways to go on posture. (For example, no climbing the bookcase as you recite!) So here's his first attempt on his poetry recitation; Work, anonymous:

Then Julia tries her hand, minus a little skip as she tries to recite the poem she just heard Aidan say. The problem with her poem is that the title is not the same as the first line, but extremely similar. Here's "Hearts are Like Doors, Anonymous":

And Lucas rattles off one of his favorites. "The Caterpillar, by Christina G. Rossetti" I love several things about this: the gap tooth, the cute way he moves his lips, the pause as he remembers to fold his hands in front, the inability to smile at the end of the poem, even though Mom is grinning like a Cheshire cat! All so endearing to a Mommy!

We are managing to have a little fun with school and I just wanted to pass that on. ;)