Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Waxing Poetical

For the record, this post is about poetry, not waxing. Didn't want anyone to be confused. After all, homeschool moms need eyebrow waxes too. Moving on...


Those of you who have been around these Barefoot Hippie Girl parts a while, know that I am a new lover of poetry. As a matter of fact, last year was the first year we even tackled poetry in home schooling. I know, it only took 5 years to figure out that it may be worth it.

Before last year, the sum of my poetry appreciation and knowledge would have been Mother Goose and hymnology.

But then I ran across Robert Frost on FB of all things, and I was hooked. I love The Road Not Taken, Fireflies, and Blueberries. We spent last year memorizing an applicable Robert Frost poem every month. It was a lot of fun interpreting them, and often drawing and/or painting pictures to illustrate the poems.


Alas, this year we are leaving Robert Frost to the 20th century. Bummer. If he lived in the 17th or 18th century I would have kept right on going with my favorite poet. That would have been a very well rounded poetical education for my kids..."oh yeah, we studied poetry our entire school career. We know all of Robert Frost's poems."

Instead I am delving into poets from around the world, but mostly in Great Britain and Europe, for our study of poetry this year. Poets who lived and wrote from 1600-1800. Thus everything will tie up neatly with our unit study idea.

I have picked out over a dozen poets with their most famous poems. We will be looking at Robert Burns, John Keats, and Phillis Wheatley, among others. We will read some of their poems and learn about the poet's personal history. I will have the kids memorize an average of one poem per month. We will also try to illustrate the poems in some way, shape or form.

Basically we will be following the same format I used last year with Robert Frost, except for branching out a bit. I am looking forward to continuing to develop our poetry reading and comprehension skills, as well as poetry appreciation.

How do you teach poetry? Do you feel it is a needed subject?


For more poetry ideas click over to...

Nicole
Lucinda
Julie
Savannah
Chareen