Poetry Memorization: Lovely Lady...

Memorization is so important for all children, even the little ones!  By using our memories, we are training our brains to learn.  Here's a great quote from the Institute for Excellence in Writing's (IEW) website,

"Memorized poetry used to be the mainstay of education; today it is truly a lost art...  this vital source of linguistic patterning... Learn not only quick and accurate methods of memorizing poetry but also the fundamental components of poetry."http://www.excellenceinwriting.com/catalog/poetry-1

The information in Catholic Schoolhouse's Tour Guide can be used for memorization.  In Year One, Week 20, we recommend the memorization of the Lovely Lady poem listed below.  Because we cover many academic areas each week, we only printed a portion of this beautiful poem.  I've included the entire poem below as seen from a public domain prayer card.

Language Arts: Sentence Fun

While our year started out with a semester on parts of speech, we've just started a quarter working on sentences.  There are actually quite a few fun things to do with these topics. 

For starters, try having your kids make up their own sentences to go with a picture book.  My children have enjoyed this and eagerly await their turns making up different versions of the same picture books.  We like Good Dog Carl and Flotsam, but there are many others available.

An idea that we used in our classes for sentence types involves reading a story aloud.  Simply done, children can pay attention to one type of sentence, like exclamatory or interrogative, and tell you when you get to one.  With a little prep work, you can have a handful of sentences from the story written on papers for them to sort on a table by category (declarative, imperative, interrogative, exclamatory) as you get to them. 

A silly idea for subjects and predicates is to have an egg carton of subjects and another egg carton of predicates.  Toss a ball in each carton to put together silly sentences.

Similar sorting ideas can be used for phrases.  Be creative and the kids will have fun practicing some fundamental grammar!