Reading the other comments I think I understand better what happened to me with today’s offering.
The article prepared me to enter into both poems, and with the first I thought how as a child I sometimes would grasp the flower first and look second. I did look with the poet, fascinated. Reality is stunning and can stir our slumbering minds to recall the author of reality.
But with the second poem, having been prepared again by the commentary, the poem took my breath away. I thought I might comment “breathtaking.” But when I read the comments I realized I had been prepared to react like a five year old. Thank you!
The Eagle was the poem of the week for our homeschool last week! Our 5 and 3 year old were very impressed by my use of their baby sister to expertly reenact the eagle first clinging to the cliffs and then diving to the waves - and she enjoyed it, too. They’re still a little young to learn about intricacies of poetic forms, but they did learn that Tennyson lived in England and was friends with the Queen, who lived in a castle, which did impress them tremendously. baby steps…
Baby steps, indeed, Adrian. What is sold as "age-appropriate" literature for kids these days we mostly consider just plain inappropriate for any age. When we home-schooled our kids, we liked to expose them to literature that was far above their ability to READ but not at all beyond their ability to understand. That's the way to do it, because they are like sponges absorbing language, syntax, grammar, vocabulary and all else -- including the rhythm and rhyme -- when they are very young. If you read great stuff to them, when they "crack the code" and do learn to read for themselves, they progress by leaps and bounds, already having the language in their heads. We continued to read aloud to our kids until they hit their teens, anyhow, because it was just fun to do. I recall a theory I heard posited decades ago about the declining vocabulary of 5 year olds between 1960 and 1980-something. The study claimed that in 1960 the vocabulary of the AVERAGE child in kindergarten in the US was 5,000 words, but that in 20-some years that AVERAGE had declined to 2,000 words. Why? A big difference was that during those two decades daycare and preschool had come upon the scene. Prior to that, children from birth to age five were in the company mostly of adults (mothers or grandmothers) and older siblings, but with the advent of daycare and preschool, children of that age were spending their days mostly with other children and were not hearing adult conversation. There were other posited explanations, all of which I am sure contributed to the decline. Our older friends, when our Jessica was born, advised us to get her books, books, books -- not that we needed much encouragement. But the best advice was to put those books on a low shelf on the floor which she could get to herself. We took that advice. Somewhere in my family "archives" I have a video I made of 18-month-old Jessica "reading" (looking at and telling the stories from) books from that shelf for 90 minutes without stopping. I stopped recording well before she stopped "reading." We also painstakingly wrote down every new word she uttered for the first two years of her life. Long before her second birthday, she had a working vocabulary of 2,000 words, and that was in 1990, by which time the AVERAGE kindergarten child had the same vocabulary. I'm so GLAD that your kids loved "The Eagle!"
"The Eagle" reminded me of the display I once saw accompanying The Book of Kells, on view in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. It explained how the symbols associated with each of the four Evangelists--a Man, a Lamb, a Lion, and an Eagle--dovetailed with the major events in the life of Christ, who was born a Man, sacrificed as a Lamb, arose from the tomb with the roar of a Lion, and soared to heaven like an Eagle.
Ed, we think ourselves so sophisticated in our times. That one example proves otherwise, because it would be unintelligible to most moderns, even with the explanation written out.
Oh, I lingered while reading the article to myself. Maybe I’ll listen to the audio another day.
Reading the other comments I think I understand better what happened to me with today’s offering.
The article prepared me to enter into both poems, and with the first I thought how as a child I sometimes would grasp the flower first and look second. I did look with the poet, fascinated. Reality is stunning and can stir our slumbering minds to recall the author of reality.
But with the second poem, having been prepared again by the commentary, the poem took my breath away. I thought I might comment “breathtaking.” But when I read the comments I realized I had been prepared to react like a five year old. Thank you!
The Eagle was the poem of the week for our homeschool last week! Our 5 and 3 year old were very impressed by my use of their baby sister to expertly reenact the eagle first clinging to the cliffs and then diving to the waves - and she enjoyed it, too. They’re still a little young to learn about intricacies of poetic forms, but they did learn that Tennyson lived in England and was friends with the Queen, who lived in a castle, which did impress them tremendously. baby steps…
Baby steps, indeed, Adrian. What is sold as "age-appropriate" literature for kids these days we mostly consider just plain inappropriate for any age. When we home-schooled our kids, we liked to expose them to literature that was far above their ability to READ but not at all beyond their ability to understand. That's the way to do it, because they are like sponges absorbing language, syntax, grammar, vocabulary and all else -- including the rhythm and rhyme -- when they are very young. If you read great stuff to them, when they "crack the code" and do learn to read for themselves, they progress by leaps and bounds, already having the language in their heads. We continued to read aloud to our kids until they hit their teens, anyhow, because it was just fun to do. I recall a theory I heard posited decades ago about the declining vocabulary of 5 year olds between 1960 and 1980-something. The study claimed that in 1960 the vocabulary of the AVERAGE child in kindergarten in the US was 5,000 words, but that in 20-some years that AVERAGE had declined to 2,000 words. Why? A big difference was that during those two decades daycare and preschool had come upon the scene. Prior to that, children from birth to age five were in the company mostly of adults (mothers or grandmothers) and older siblings, but with the advent of daycare and preschool, children of that age were spending their days mostly with other children and were not hearing adult conversation. There were other posited explanations, all of which I am sure contributed to the decline. Our older friends, when our Jessica was born, advised us to get her books, books, books -- not that we needed much encouragement. But the best advice was to put those books on a low shelf on the floor which she could get to herself. We took that advice. Somewhere in my family "archives" I have a video I made of 18-month-old Jessica "reading" (looking at and telling the stories from) books from that shelf for 90 minutes without stopping. I stopped recording well before she stopped "reading." We also painstakingly wrote down every new word she uttered for the first two years of her life. Long before her second birthday, she had a working vocabulary of 2,000 words, and that was in 1990, by which time the AVERAGE kindergarten child had the same vocabulary. I'm so GLAD that your kids loved "The Eagle!"
"The Eagle" reminded me of the display I once saw accompanying The Book of Kells, on view in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. It explained how the symbols associated with each of the four Evangelists--a Man, a Lamb, a Lion, and an Eagle--dovetailed with the major events in the life of Christ, who was born a Man, sacrificed as a Lamb, arose from the tomb with the roar of a Lion, and soared to heaven like an Eagle.
Ed, we think ourselves so sophisticated in our times. That one example proves otherwise, because it would be unintelligible to most moderns, even with the explanation written out.