Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Two Funnies

I love little kids and the way they think, interpreting things through what they know.
Funny #1

I am teaching poetry to the 2nd-5th graders in our homeschool co op. (2nd gragers rebelled against being in with K and 1st, so came to my class.) The youngest in the class, Leif, is just seven. I taught them about meter, stressed and unstressed syllables, using their names, and their bodies. "An easy wasy to remember it is if you're stressed, you're kinda on your toes, and when you're unstressed, you're pretty relaxed." So we went around the room and said everyone's full name, rising up on our toes when the syllable was stressed, and flopping rag doll-ish when the syllable was unstressed. A couple of weeks later we did the same thing with lines of poetry.

Leif, my little seven year old, really got it. He would raise his hand every time we read a poem and would say, "It went, DAH duh, DAh duh, DAH duh...." or whatever. A couple of weeks ago he raised his hand and said, "It went UPSET, not upset, not upset, UPSET, not upset, not upset....."

Funny #2

The twins are learning keyboard from video at home this semester. A few days ago, Ruby was practicing a new song. It was in a minor key, with lots of diminished chords--kinda saddish. Carlson came up to me and said, "Mom, this song is hurting my feelings."

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