Four Poems We've Memorized this Year (so far...)

Ok, I'm going to resist the temptation to back track and fill in all the gaps that are begging to be filled in. In my perfect world I document all of our exciting and even our boring days so that I can pour over them in the future with that silly grin on my face and remember "the good ole days".

 But who are we kidding? The perfect world, at least my version of it, doesn't exist yet. I do comfort myself with the notion that Heaven keeps a perfect record of all things that matter to me personally. I really do. I truly look forward to a day when I can open Heaven's record books and re-watch family videos that don't even exist on earth, or perfectly remember special days that have gone fuzzy in my memory. It will be wonderful. But maybe also terrible? The flip side of that is that Heaven probably also records all of my really bad parenting days, the days I was a terrible wife, and the days I failed to live my religion to its fullest. There must be opposition in all things, right?

 I digress..back to poetry, as indicated by the post's title. I had wanted to buy IEW's poetry memorization course but found that I had already spent too much this year on our homeschool. So I decided to piece together my own poetry memorization program and add it to our morning routine this year. I just started with poetry books we already own and so far this year we've had success with these four poems:

 Alphabet Stew
I wanted to start out with something fun and light hearted that would be easy to memorized to kick this thing off with a win!  It worked. Even though it's a silly and perhaps childish poem, it has a good message that is applicable to any homeschool.  I found it on page 188 of this book



We did many things to help us memorize this poem, but the funnest was probably assigning 1-2 lines to each student and asking that student to illustrate those lines.  We then tried to guess which lines were being illustrated and put them in order as we recited the poem.
Here are a few of the illustrations that came about from that activity:

I am not sure why these came out upside down, or how to change that, but there you go. See if you can tell which lines are being illustrated.

 


Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
We had memorized this poem many years before, but the kids did not remember it. My mind was jogged to revisit this poem when it was mentioned by The Comma Queen in a video I used to teach my high school composition course last semester.  (More on that another time...maybe)
If you haven't ever watched the Comma Queen on  YouTube, I would recommend her! She adds a little humor to what can otherwise be very dull grammar lessons.




The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
I was on a Robert Frost kick, I guess.  Our next poem was the classic "forge your own path" poem and we had a great time learning it.  My girls have a real knack for memorizing things and they were sometimes annoyed with my constant slip ups! I think what helped us nail this one (or helped ME) was to make hand motions that go along with the lines of the poem. That was super helpful. I also created fill-in-the-blank sheets for this poem.  As I read the poem aloud the kids would fill in the missing words. There were a lot of missing words so I would read it as many times as it took for them to fill all the words correctly.

The Difference
I only became aware of this poem because poetry memorization is a part of the 7th grade English curriculum at The Good and the Beautiful.  I switched my son over to this program in...late October (I think?) because I felt like he was spinning his wheels with Moving Beyond the Page and needed something more structured.  So far, I do feel like it's been a good fit. Anyway, one of the poems was this great poem about prayer that I had never heard before.  The author is unknown. Here's a screet shot of it

THE DIFFERENCE

Submitted By: angeleyes5278

I got up early one morning and rushed right into the day. I had so much to accomplish that I didn't have time to pray. Problems just tumbled about me, and heavier came each task. "Why doesn't God help me?" I wondered. He answered, You didn't ask," I wanted to see joy and beauty, but the day toiled on, gray and bleak. I wondered why God didn't show me. He said, "But you didn't seek.: I tried to come into God's presence. I used all my keys at the lock. God gently and lovingly chided, "My child, you didn't knock." I woke up early this morning and paused before enter the day. I had so much to accomplish that i had to take time to pray.

Author: UNKNOWN

So what is next for our poetry memorization?  Here I am Sunday night trying to get myself back in school mode after coming off a long Christmas break. And I'm trying to figure out our next poems to memorize!  I found a terrific resource and have decided that we're going to GO BIG and tackle some Shakespeare.  We're going to do Sonnet 116.  YIKES.  But the resources on that page look great and I will definitely incorporate them into our memorization process.

After that, I will likely go back to consulting this book (below) when looking for a new poem.




Or pick another one from the list given here.

Maybe some of this inspires you to memorize a few poems of your own.  I think ti's a great way to help kids develop lots of great skills and actually grow that little noggin!