Books and Poems

I don't know why but the last couple of days I have been thinking that I should post the books and poems we are reading/learning on the blog.  We just finished King Arthur last night.  Gavin loved it!  He seemed to follow it fairly easily once we got past the first couple chapters and he got used to the flow of the story.  His favorite part (according to what he's telling me right now) was when Arthur was fighting against the black knight although the black knight was just a little bit scary.  He was disappointed that Arthur was kind of mean at the end because he was fighting Sir Lancelot instead of forgiving him.

While the boys eat I usually read them poems and then read from a chapter book.  Gavin just memorized the following poem:

The Bunny

by Adelaide Love

I saw a small brown bunny run

Across the winter snow

And wondered where he lived and why

He had to hurry so.

Perhaps he had stayed out to long

And Mother Bunny'd scold;

Perhaps he hurried home because

His little feet were cold.

We also almost have memorized Robert Louis Stevenson's Picture Books In Winter, which is too long for me to copy but Gavin likes that one too.  If you really want to read it you can find it at this link:

http://www.lone-star.net/mall/literature/rls/PicturebooksinWinter.htm

Now we are working on this poem:

The Arrow and the Song

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I shot an arrow into the air,

It fell to the earth, I knew not where;

For, so swiftly it flew, the sight

Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,

It fell to the earth, I knew now where;

For who has sight so keen and strong,

That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak

I found the arrow, still unbroke;

And the song, from beginning to end,

I found again in the heart of a friend.

After we have read our poems, which I try to get done at breakfast but that doesn't always happen (I have to get better with routines) then we read a book at lunch.  Right now we are reading this chapter book about George Washington.  It has a a fairly advanced vocabulary for him, but again, he seems to be following it okay.

In the last week we have also read:

  That's all I can think of right now.  Anyway, I'm not sure if anyone is interested in what exactly we are reading at the moment but thought I'd throw it out there.  Gavin is still reading Dick and Jane books and he read Green Eggs and Ham all by himself last week too!