Drawing Up Poetry

Over the last year year we decided to take a different approach to poetry and illustrate it.  We studied Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg and Alfred Noyes.  I have to say we thoroughly enjoyed this method and are definitely going to be using this method again.

Alfred Noyes’ The Highway Man has always been a favorite in our home and especially on full moon nights, it is a must-read!  I had no idea he had written so much about Japan!

We read through a collection of each poet’s poems –  what we found online, as well as those in the poetry collections we have at home.  I would read aloud most of the time.  Sometimes the children took turns reading.  Occasionally we read to music but we usually found this distracting.  After the reading the children would draw and write the words that they liked.  Sometimes we narrated back what we thought the poem was about, what feelings it aroused, the pictures it painted in our minds.

“…wild regrets…trotting rain..arrows…music…wonder..
“

..”many little wild wishes..” in Margaret’s eyes

We wrote down words and lines that stood out for us and illustrated it as we wished.  For my own record, I copied down my favorite lines and enjoyed the children’s artistic impressions.  I think this year Carl Sandburg definitely became one of my favorite poets!  All three of us immensely enjoyed Chicago.  We all got a sense of Sandburg’s love for the city; his perception of it’s heart in the midst of it’s toil, industry, concrete and crime

When white teeth were illustrated as window panes of light in the sky scrapers; I thought how true was Charlotte Mason’s understanding of children! That they can listen and discern the intent of the writer without the mother’s unnecessary interpretation. Laying claim to a poem…making it their own.

We read poetry this year.  We listened. We felt. We saw. We drew. We wrote… and hopefully we will remember!