And I am waiting for the heaviness in the air to break/And reveal some small irrelevant truth

We are so excited by National Poetry month that we are going to post two lessons a week!
previously-Third Eye Poems

Week one/Walt Whitman Poems

In "Song of Myself", Whitman shares of himself and of his secrets of the world. He boasts of his knowledge and of the mystery of life. Encourage yr child to use a repetition like "Come with me"... and help them build a poem about what they can show you in the world. Ask them to tell you what they know. Explain to them that they can be in charge of the world and with this prompt they will offer you up a magical string of words I expect.

Finnian's spoken poem:
Come with me and I will show you the sky and a juicy lollipop
Come with me and I will show you a dog that will bark about that lollipop
Come with me and I show you a cat that meows about dog bones
I will show you when I'm happy and sad
and when I want a Thomas train
that's all

It really is that simple to work with poetry. We don't sit down school style and learn. We sat on the couch and Blaise was sitting at our feet playing blocks. The TV was on the 80's music channel and we just chatted. I read parts of "Song of Myself" and then Finn told me to stop. He got a bit bored with the poetry reading today...BUT, he got really interested in the chat we had about the world we could create in our minds eye. He is way into his magical thinking and he started to jump on the couch and that amazing light came into his eyes. You know the light I am talking about? The learning and connection light? I took my journal and repeated "Come with me and I will show you..." and he just spoke his lines. Shortly after that he banged his brother on the head and had a tantrum. But for those 20 minutes with Whitman we learned some together. These are the moments that hold the day together like crazy glue.