Smrt Lernins

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.

When asked to correct some minor grammar and punctuation errors, Captain Science instead chose to completely rewrite his story. Unfortunately, this resulted in it no longer fulfilling the requirements of the assignment, so he is now working on draft #3. As you can see, version two is as bizarre as version one, of not more so.

Once upon a time, there was a nice town, and nice people lived in this town, but they had been cursed by a wizard, so they couldn’t speak any adjectives. As a result, their sentences were dull. One day, a spy who worked for the wizard noticed two men talking…about his master! The first man said, “The king will surely like when I deliver the culprit.” The second man said, “He certainly will.” Then a third voice said, “Listen up, both of you! Your wretched town will never survive with my spied lurking in every corner!” The spy’s eyes widened. The third voice belonged to his master. He then hurried off to prepare for a siege.

Captain Science’s grammar work today was to choose one word from a list of choices for each part of speech, use those words to write one sentence, and then use that sentence to start a story. I had some trouble getting him to actually use all the parts of speech, and as you can see, he played a little fast and loose with the interjections, but I found his story to be…well, ok, I found it to be absolutely absurd.

Once, there was a nice town, and nice people lived in this town, but one day, they were suddenly cursed so they couldn’t say interjections like “yes” and “no.” One day, a spy was spying when he saw two men talking. The first man was saying, “…the lord will not be pleased–.” The second man interrupted with, “not you!” since he couldn’t say “no!” “Besides–” he added, but he couldn’t say any more since he couldn’t say “Why you?” “FINE!” shouted the first man, “forget it.” “Whew!” said the second man. “Let’s race to the park,” he added, and they took off. “I like the second man,” said the spy. “He saved my master’s life.”

Sometimes I feel like the kid in “The Rocking Horse Winner,” rocking away because there must be more money. Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy curricula, and through curricula comes happiness. So say we all.

I know there are a billion “homeschooling for free or next to free” websites out there, who will tell me I’m doing it wrong if I’m dishing out more than $5 for history, but between the gas and energy that would be required to go back and forth to the public library, which doesn’t have the vast majority of what Captain Science needs anyway, thus requiring heavy supplementing, I assure you, buying the exact curricula comes out cheaper in the wash.

I will confess to you that I’m about to make a major curriculum purchase, the Michael Clay Thompson Grammar Town set. We’re looking at the Level 2 Basic Homeschool package, because it has all the teacher manuals, which include the student books, for the level, which is for gifted 4th or on-level 5th graders. If only I had the money, I’d buy the complete package, which has separate student books, but I can’t dish out an extra $65 on top of the $105 I’ll be spending tonight. From what I’ve heard about the curriculum, it will be worth the money, especially for a language-mastering, Life of Fred-loving boy like Captain Science*.

Patchfire and I long to order the entire MCT series, so that we can see exactly where it goes. Unlike some curricula, which are available at the Scary Jesus Book Store (which I’m not sure I’ll be patronizing any longer, due to the owner’s attitude towards his customers), MCT can’t be bought locally, so we don’t have the luxury of flipping through it at our leisure. Between us, we’ll own Grammar Island and Grammar Town, but that doesn’t help us project forward to Grammar Voyage and the levels beyond. Will we continue to love it? Only time will tell, but I sure wish I already knew. I could develop a language arts plan from no until the end of time.

If I had an unfettered curricula budget, I would buy:

• Michael Clay Thompson language arts series
• Life of Fred College Prep Set
• The Medieval and Early Modern World seven volume set.
• The Definitive Visual Guides to Art, the Universe, and War
• Bevington’s Complete Works of Shakespeare, 6th ed. (mine is several editions out of date)
• Surely quite a few other things, but let’s focus on the brain candy above, shall we?

Unfortunately, I don’t have a limitless budget for curricula, so I have to buy only what I need, thus limiting my ability to plan ahead. As a secular homeschooler, my options for comprehensive, secular materials that challenge my gifted child, yet are engaging enough to make him want to learn are few are far between. Life of Fred is one of the few that meet nearly all of those goals (falling short only by not being entirely secular, though close enough for our purposes). MCT looks like it might fit into that narrow set of parameters. The DK books are glorious, though they require I develop all my own lesson plans for history (not a horrible torture, luckily). I also don’t have the money to keep replacing curricula that don’t work. It’s a hard knock life sometimes, being a secular classical educator.

What’s on your dream list of curricula?

*Captain Science declared tonight, “I don’t want to be called ‘Captain Science’ on the computer. I want to be known as ‘Shadow King.’” My answer: “Uh…yeah. You know, not so much.”