Captain Science’s assignment from Michael Clay Thompson’s Building Poems today was to write a poem based on a photograph. He chose Steve McCurry’s famous photograph of the Afghan refugee girl, published in National Geographic.
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The Afghan Girl
Her eyes are like a rainbow, yet |
Ten days, y’all. Ten more freaking days! I’m so excited, I could practically piddle on the rug.
This week, Captain Science went back and redid a few lessons from Paragraph Town using his other reading as the subject matter. He finished (finally, Mr. Dawdler!) reading Wind in the Door and Nordic Gods and Heroes. He completed several sentences in Practice Town.
Officer Daddyman and Captain Science worked together on some algebra word problems of Daddyman’s devising. Captain Science is greatly looking forward to starting Life of Fred: Beginning Algebra, now that he has a little taste of that kind of math. Algebra was always my favorite mathematical subject, so I’m excited about it, too!
Captain Science has advanced to the next set of piano books and continues to show a natural talent for it. He’s working with 8th notes and runs, and is also doing a little jazz, which is fun to hear! Two hours a week is a lot of piano lesson, but I think the time investment is going to pay off in the long run.
Our co-op is about done. Brain class is over (and none too soon, as tempers have been flaring and the last class involved Eclectic Girl calling Captain Science a hoarder, and Captain Science calling Eclectic Girl a stealer, neither of which is true), game class will continue with no foreseeable end, and the short story class will only have one more meeting together. Along with writing, the students have learned about editing, submitting drafts to magazines and journals, and writing contests. I wish Captain Science had been willing to invest more time in working on his story, as I’m having a hard time getting a good full-length draft from him, but he’s not the only one in the class balking at it a bit. I think we’ll take a step back and let him work on it more over the summer.
Physics lab was pretty much the same-ol’, same-ol’. At least Captain Science and Eclectic Girl didn’t squabble, right?
Captain Science did a ton of poetry work this week, since we didn’t get much done in Building Poems last week. He covered limericks, creating his own stanzas, metaphor, simile, apostrophe, and personification this week, writing poems for each topic. The following are his personification and apostrophe poems, which he decided to combine together in this format:
Sun and Moon
I.
The sunlight shines upon the sea
his goal is to light everything.
While lighting up the other side
the moon illuminates the tides.
For many years they battled far,
but now they always share the earth.
II.
O, brightest sun, you hottest light
begins the day and stops the night.
Yet O great moon, your noble rays
shall make much beauty and end the day.
For many aeons you two have fought
but at this time you battle not.
I’m sure you can imagine how proud I am of him!
Patchfire writes about homeschoolers needing to hear a little bragging, too. I think that the best way to get that for Captain Science is by sharing his poety, which strikes me as quite mature for his age. I’m no poetry-naive yokel, either; My master’s thesis was a collection of poetry. I hope you’ll humor me in taking these opportunities to share the Captain’s works.
Here is Captain Science’s latest poem from Michael Clay Thompson’s Building Poems, a poem in the Rime Royal form (7 lines of iambic pentameter in an ababbcc rhyme scheme):
The Great Greek Heroes
The great Greek beasts and heroes long ago
Had much adventures many, many times
Like Jason and the Argonauts had rowed
The monsters fell to them; They were sublime,
And later on in one great different time,
Achilles was the greatest hero yet.
He fought great Hector and he won, you bet!
We’re going to work on not overusing “many” and “great,” but the kid managed to stick “Argonauts” and and “adventures” into iambic pentameter. Not only that, he correctly used some of his Caesar’s English vocabulary. Yes, he pretty much rocks.
Captain Science’s essay for today:
World War II
World War II stabbed terror into the hearts of thousands. Many lost a friend or loved one in this sword of death, and terrible, ruthless Germans crushed many souls in their hands. Planes swarmed the sky and brought whole cities to their knees, while tanks struck down any pathcrossers who bravely stood against them. Thousands of lives were devastated by the evil hands of Germany, but America won in the finish.
Four poetic meters, that is: iambic pentameter, trochaic tetrameter, dactylic tetrameter, and anapestic pentameter.
Captain Science’s assignment for Michael Clay Thompson’s Building Poems today was to choose a topic, choose four words, and write four four-line poems using the above four meters, each containing those four words and addressing the topic. Because it’s a rather challenging task, I agreed to do it as well. We had about an hour to work on our poems.
Captain Science’s topic: Roman wars
Captain Science’s words: The (I told him that’s a cheater word and next time it won’t count), Roman, loud, and war
Iambic Pentameter
The Roman drums of war sounded out loud
You could hear many men crying out loud
And then there was something that made them scream
A laser was attacking with a beam
Trochaic Tetrameter
Roman solders war my men and
Arrows shriek loud through the air, then
catapults chuck boulders ’round — whoa
One arrow ’bout grazed my hair!
Dactylic Trimeter (he forgot he was doing tetrameter)
Bash! Oh no — bloom! There goes my tower
’cause of the catapult’s boulder, it
flew so loud, yet it did,
I had some horrible curses, so
I cursed the Romans then the war
stopped strangely, ’cause of the dead army.
(This was supposed to be anapestic tetrameter, but he totally lost the meter on this one — I like it, though)
I’m a sorceror, so I cursed
all the Romans. The two armies
had warred day and night for
10 YEARS! Finally we have
won, and against Rome’s
army, now we are going
home so we can celebrate so loud.
My topic: Seasons
My words: apple, flowers, faces, feel
Iambic Pentameter
The sun beats down, the flowers brown and wilt
Our faces, also brown, are turning pink
My mother’s apple pie served a la mode
I feel a warmth that isn’t from the heat
Trochaic Tetrameter
Apple picking in the orchard
Falling leaves brush by our faces
Flowers of the summer fading
Autumn colors in their places
Dactylic Tetrameter
Oh, can you feel it? The winter is fading and
flowers are peeking their faces up out of the
snow and the apple trees soon will be blooming, so
fare the well, winter, for springtime is entering
Anapestic Pentameter
Faces cold, feel the snow soft and fine on the pines, evening time.
Frozen cheeks, apple red, snowflakes light on your head. Softly said
Whispered word, barely heard in the night’s dimming light.
Close your eyes, safe and warm. Winter storm singing nigh, lullaby.
Captain Science wrote this little ditty today as an exercise in iambs and spondees.
I go into the kitchen
To get some pretzel sticks
And how much pretzels do I get
Well, nine’s how much I pick.
He didn’t quite integrate his understanding of the spondee into his poetic meter, but he’s getting there. He can explain it just fine, but since he’s only nine and still occasionally emphasizes words oddly in conversation, I don’t expect his usage to be perfect yet. We discussed that “many,” not “much,” would be grammatically correct here. He rewrote it to conserve the iambic rhythm and to try to use the spondee correctly. “Many” in the last line is intended to be the spondee, and when he reads the poem aloud, he stresses both syllables of “many.”
I go into the kitchen
To get some pretzel sticks
How many pretzels do I get?
Well, nine’s how many I pick.
…you make an ass of Nancy, maybe? Captain Science was a little concerned that “assonance” starts with a “bad word” (queue shocked 9-year-old face), but grasped the concepts of assonance, consonance, and alliteration quickly an easily. He wrote a little poem using all three.
The Ghost Judge
The midnight moon is spooky,
And scary ghouls roam everywhere.
There’s even a ghost judge,
and it looks like he’s sued someone,
for he closed around a zombie
and he never came again.
Yes, he closed around a zombie
and he never came again.
Captain Science has started working on Michael Clay Thompson’s Building Poems. Today, he read and then wrote poems with end rhymes, internal rhymes, and eye rhymes. I asked that he write a minimum of four lines for each poem.
The Roman Slave (end rhyme)
In the darkening sky,
In ancient Rome,
Chased by his master,
The slave ran home.
The Old Man’s Night (internal rhyme)
One long rainy night, in an old man’s sight,
He saw something at his open door.
He said “Go away, or I’ll get you, I may!”
And the thing flew out into the moor.
“Well, it’s in the plains…oh my! My leg pains!”
The old man said in disgust,
And because of the rain his short metal cane
Was also stating to rust.
The Rain (eye rhyme)
One day a little boy
Was soaked by a sudden rain.
The next day when he went out to play
It started to rain again.
My little author finally decided he’d do the assignment as assigned. This version is a little less amusing, but actually correctly incorporated all 8 parts of speech and was free from glaring grammatical/punctuation errors (he could have just rewritten the first story, but wouldn’t).
Once there was a boy, living in a town, and he ran so confidently and fast during races that everyone who saw him run would say, “Wow!” One day, in a racing tournament, he participated and raced into the finals. as soon as the starter gun fired, he and his three competitors took off. He was in first place neck-to-neck with another guy. 100 feet…50 feet…he was now in first place alone. 25 feet…10…15…10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-0! He won the tournament for the 34th time, and felt great holding up the golden trophy.
A banner week! This week was pretty much all success, very little arse-dragging or slacking or attitude.
Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents was gangbusters, chapters 16-19 and the first pass at the bridge. Granted, he got all loosey-goosey come bridge time, so he’ll have to do at least one more try, but every other day this week, he finished quickly and with little to no error. He seems to have finally found his pace with the decimals.
I was thrilled to implement the MCT curricula this week. Captain Science absolutely loves Grammar Town. It’s mainly reading, with very little written work, though there are several sections of memorization (pronouns, verb tenses, etc.). I’ve had Captain Science write the memorization stuff down and we have been doing little memory games when we’re at the table for a meal or riding in the care. I made up a poem for the subject and object pronouns, which Cpt. Science enjoyed. He’s already well into the book, covering pgs 3-55, which means he’s about at the halfway point. Good thing we have plenty of other language arts stuff to work on!
Captain Science also began Caesar’s English I. He did the introduction on Tuesday and the first lesson today. Again, little written work, a lot of reading, and then review. I told Captain Science that if he can pass the first review on the first attempt, we’ll start his actual Latin curriculum!
At Patchfire’s recommendation, we started the poetry along with grammar. No actual writing yet, just reading. Captain Science read the first section, “Building Poems.” He enjoys reading the poems, though I hope he’ll also enjoy writing them. I need to compile a list of example poems for each of the topics (assonance, alliteration, iambic pentameter, etc.) covered. Once I do, I’ll post that here.
Speaking of writing, we started our short story “class” with Captain Science and Eclectic Girl this week. The children first wrote down what they thought the components of a short story might be, then we discussed them and talked about why each guess was or wasn’t an element of a short story. We talked about length, conflict and resolution, antagonists and protagonists, then Cpt. Science and EG wrote a paragraph describing their antagonist and his/her main conflict in the story. EG’s story is about a girl from Chocolate World, trying to get to Candy World. Cpt. Science’s story is about a warrior from his imaginary world of Exon and the battle to…well, I’m not exactly clear on that, but he’s got the whole story to explain it to me!
History this week was the final bit of ancient Rome, the Pantheon Project. Next week, we’ll do a quick review and whatever final assessment I come up with. We’ve done crosswords, word puzzles, and Venn diagrams, so I need to come up with something else fun. Any suggestions?
We’re also back on the ball with Science on the same day (Tuesday) EG and Patchfire came over for writing, Patchfire taught a science unit on the brain. Cpt. Science and EG read, looked at CAP, PET, and MRI scans of the brain (which they Googled), and colored a scan of the brain. On Thursday, we went over for a continuation of the unit on water and heat.
Next week, Officer Daddyman starts his first board and card game design class. I think we have a few other families interested, so I think that will be a lot of fun. He’s great with kids that age, too, so I think he’ll also get a lot of enjoyment out of the class. If he hadn’t become a cop, he could easily have been a wonderful middle school teacher. He has the kind of patience for children ages 8-13 that I just don’t have. I’m better with the littles and the great-bigs. The in-between-bigs aren’t my best area.
The Tank also had a great week at school, though it was early release week, due to the public school schedule. Can I get a “and that’s another reason why we’re not re-enrolling him next year” from the audience? The high point of the week was Pajama Day, when Tank got to wear his big brother pajamas to class and bring a stuffed animal. He chose Captain Science’s old Build a Bear, named “Bye Bye Bear” that meows when you squeeze its paw (hey, Cpt. Science was only 2 when he made it, ok?).
Babypie is talking up a storm. I started making a list of the things she says (to me, at least) and I came up with around 20 words! At 10 months old! Another talker like her biggest brother, I guess. Amazing how much she and Captain Science are alike.
My only accomplishments for the week were ticking off some unschoolers and developing mastitis. I recovered from the unschooler thing right away, but the mastitis has been a slower go of it. Still feeling run down and glad it’s finally the weekend.
