I fell in love with the rhythm and rhyme of poetry because of my first grade teacher who had us memorize nursery rhymes and beginning poetry. I extended those 100+ poems we memorized as a class to a lovely set of poetry I had at home.  My mom’s classic set of orange Childcraft Books from the 40′s/50′s became my time machine to lands of yore while I practiced reading with memorized poems in this book of vintage charm. Present day experiences remind me of many poems… 

From meeting someone who introduced himself to me as “Jack,” whose sister was “Jill.” I asked him how his head was doing and in puzzlement he felt his head until I recited the poem to him. He walked away chuckling…

We had to have birds baked in a pie for our first Medieval Feast… 

When I visit the lambs at Colonial Williamsburg…

Memories of visiting my grandmother…

These poems opened the door to the later volumes of short stories

…where I wondered if William Tell could shoot that apple without harming his son…

…where I explored hidden passageways in a French chateau…

…where I wondered about walking in wooden shoes in the land of Holland. 

I wanted to introduce my children to the love of literature through the doorway of poetry, impart that same enjoyment of rhythm and rhyme.  When they were little we carried the tradition of memorizing poetry from the same Childcraft books, My mom kept her set but my mother-in-law let me take home her set for the kids to enjoy.

When my kids were entering their teen years, I purchased IEW’s Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization, both the book and CD. Especially in the summer, when we drove somewhere in the van, we took the CD and book with us.  (Except when we were with my husband, who preferred the Adventures in Odyssey CD.) Either way we were working on auditory skills…which I think helped the kids immensely when going places like Colonial Williamsburg. 

At CW they get to sit and listen to monologues of Founding Fathers like Lafayette, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry. My kids listen with patience, interest, respect and learn.  Also they can stay tuned in to the street theater, Revolutionary City.  Because I had them listen to “Adventures in Odyssey” since they were 3 and 5, they had a fun way to start listening to details. My 3 year old son would ALWAYS ask for explanations and I’d always tell him to listen first. In fact, the rule became, “listen to the entire story first, then ask questions.” This is how it works at CW too, so they had plenty of practice and preparation to listen to the “Great Ones” speak without the need for visual entertainment.

Classical education is driven by the idea of reading and studying the Classics as the foundation to building rhetoric. This was  precisely the way of education in the 18th century.  Thomas Jefferson studied the classics at the College of William and Mary, James Madison at Princeton University, and John Adams at Harvard. His wife Abigail read all of the books in her father’s library, thereby educating herself in the classics.  John Adams fell in love with this young lady whom he enjoyed discussing great ideas with.  Later as first lady, she could effectively communicate with other men in government because she knew the same sorts of topics they knew.   Patrick Henry learned the classics at home from his father and grandfather who had themselves received a classical education.  George Washington educated himself (because his father died when he was young) by reading many of the classics his peers were studying.  Even Lafayette  and Napoleon achieved a classical education in France.  The classics were the powerhouse of education so that with one communicator’s literary reference all knew the implications. 

These learned people did more than read the classics, they memorized and internalized them so that applying the references was second nature. Especially gifted for effective persuasion was Patrick Henry, whose fiery speeches filled with classical allusions, ignited a revolution.

“Caesar,” said he, “had his Brutus, Charles his Cromwell, and (pausing) George the third (here a cry of treason, treason was heard, supposed to issue from the chair, but with admirable presence of mind he proceeded) may profit by their examples. Sir, if this be treason,” continued he, “make the most of it.” 

Patrick Henry also wrote poetry for his children to read to them at night before bedtime.  According to them he “wrote poetry beautifully, and often composed with much facility little sonnets adapted to old scotch songs which he admired for his daughters to sing and play.”  

The hallmark of classical education is to teach linguistic patterns to our children to internalize, to help them form original works in later years.  A great way to help the kids begin memorizing portions of classical works is through poetry.  Poetry entails right brain tasking.  The fun and creativity of rhythm and rhyme of simple poetry paves the way to more complex works.  IEW’s Linguistic Development Through Poetry Memorization starts with simple pieces like “ooey gooey” and gradually works to more complex pieces like “Charge of the Light Brigade” and “Through Woods on a Snowy Evening.”  My kids and I memorized many pieces while driving around Texas and sometimes my husband even let me pull it out on long drives on vacations. 

This IEW product gave my kids  opportunities to choose and memorize more complex pieces on their own for our history presentations. My son has memorized the preamble to the Constitution, Patrick Henry’s memorable ”Give me Liberty or Death”  portion (the actual speech is quite lengthy), a great Davy Crockett speech,  the Gettysburg Address and lines spoken by Oddysseus from The Odyssey. My daughter has memorized “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,” Portia’s “Merchant of Venice” speech, ”The Charge of the Light Brigade,”  Anne of Green Gables, “The Lady of Shallot.” and Penelope’s speech from “The Oddyssey.”  Many of these can be found in the IEW poetry memorization book.  We found that using this book/CD set inspired us to expand our repertoire to more resources. We have more recitations planned for our next history presentation: The Renaissance and Reformation. Stay tuned!

Disclaimer: My apologies for the ads which HSB put on my blog. I don’t mind the ones for Williamsburg though.