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You are here: Home > 2020 > May > 15

Archives for 15 May 2020

πŸ–‹ πŸ‘¦ WONDERFUL WORDS: Robert Frost’s β€œBirches”

15 May 2020 by Bob O'Hara

Spring is the season for young people to get outside and gain experience. In order to understand advanced, abstract concepts like metaphor, a student must first accumulate a good deal of non-metaphorical experience in the world. You can’t see how one thing can stand for another until you’ve experienced the one thing in the first place.

Go outside and find some birch trees this lovely spring week and read this poem aloud as you tug on their branches β€” it’s our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of May, from Robert Frost:

Birches

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust β€”
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.

But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows β€”
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father’s trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Unlike many of Frost’s tightly structured metrical poems, this is a looser, more prosy, narrative work (although ten- and eleven-syllable lines do occur in high frequency). Let’s see how it sounds when Frost himself reads it:

➒

It’s always good to hear poets read their own poems, since they know them best, but I’ll make an unpopular confession here: I don’t think Frost is always the best reader. In general, he reads too fast, and I suspect that by the latter part of his life he had given so many public readings that he had gotten in the habit of just zipping along in a way that can make it hard to follow the story-line on first hearing.

“Swinging doesn’t bend them down to stayΒ / As ice-storms do.” (Image: betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com.)

But a good poem, like “Birches,” deserves many readings and hearings, fast and slow, at all seasons of the year. This season, give it a first reading in your homeschool, and then go out and bend some branches.

What wonderful words and poetical productions have you been studying in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😊

❑ So was I once myself a swinger of birches: If a special line or turn of phrase happens to strike you in one of our weekly poems, just copy it onto your homeschool bulletin board for a few days and invite your students to speak it aloud β€” that’s all it takes to begin a new poetical friendship and learn a few lovely words that will stay with you for life. 😊

❑ Literary lives: The website of the Poetry Foundation includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including Robert Frost) that are suitable for high school students and homeschool teachers. πŸ–‹

❑ Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Add your name to our River Houses mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox, and print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) to follow along with us as we visit forty-eight of our favorite friends over the course of the year. πŸ“–

Filed Under: Homeschool Language & Literature, Poems-of-the-Week

πŸ¦… FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Mockingbirds, Catbirds, and Thrashers

15 May 2020 by Horace the Otter 🦦

Every Friday we invite you and your homeschool students to learn about a different group of North American birds in your recommended bird guide (riverhouses.org/books). It’s a great way to add a few minutes of informal science, geography, natural history, and imagination to your homeschool schedule throughout the year.

This week’s birds are the Mockingbirds, Catbirds, and Thrashers (pages 416–421), sometimes called the “mimic-thrushes” because of their general resemblance to the members of the “true” Thrush family.

[See attached blog post for images and video]

If you’re teaching younger children, the way to use these posts is just to treat your bird guide as aΒ picture book and spend aΒ few minutes each week looking at all the interesting birds they may see one day. With that, your little lesson is done.

If you have older students, one of your objectives should be to help them become fluent with a technical reference book that’s packed with dense information, the kind of book they will encounter in many different fields of study. Here is the bird guide’s introduction to this week’s group, written in the customary telegraphic style:

“MOCKINGBIRDSΒ Β· CATBIRDS Β· THRASHERS β€” Family Mimidae. Notable singers, unequaled in N.A. [North America] for the rich variety and volume of their song. Some mimic the songs of other species. Species: 34 World, 12 N.A.“

When you’re training your young naturalists, teach them to ask and answer from their bird guide some of the first questions any naturalist would ask about aΒ new group β€” about the Mockingbird family, for example. How many species? (34 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (12 species in North America, and the individual maps will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Notable singers, mimics, and so on.)

Pick a representative species or two to look at in detail each week and read the entry aloud, or have your students study it and then narrate it back to you, explaining all the information it contains. This week, why not investigate the Northern Mockingbird (page 406), the best-known member of this family and a species found across much of the United States (although not common in the northwest).

[See attached blog post for images and video]

All sorts of biological information is packed into the brief species descriptions in your bird guide β€” can your students tease it out? How big is the Northern Mockingbird? (10 inches long, much of it tail.) What is its scientific name? (Mimus polyglottos, the many-tongued mimic.) Will you be able to find this species where you live? At what times of year and in what habitat? (Study the range map and range description carefully to answer those questions, and see the book’s back flap for a map key.) Do the males and females look alike? The adults and juveniles? What song or call does this species make? How can you distinguish it from similar species? (The text and illustrations should answer all these questions.)

Mockingbirds sing loud and long during the spring and summer, sometimes even at night, and they are true mimics, replicating the songs of other bird species with great fidelity. In the recording above (which I chose because it’s from my region of the country) I can hear a Common Yellowthroat (0:07), a woodpecker of some kind (0:53), a Blue Jay (1:17), a Red-eyed Vireo (1:19), and a Blue Jay again (1:35) β€” all of them from the throat of one Mockingbird.

For a second species in the Mockingbird family this week, take a look at the Gray Catbird (page 416), another species that occurs across most of the United States (except the far west).

[See attached blog post for images and video]

Unlike Mockingbirds, which generally sing from prominent perches, Catbirds are birds of thickets and dense brush, so while they are common, they are not often seen by casual observers. They occasionally mimic other birds but are not as talented at it as Mockingbirds. Their usual song is an extended squeaky warble heard coming from a thicket, as well as an occasional “meow,” which gives them their name.

As a representative Thrasher this week, why not look at the Sage Thrasher (page 418), aΒ widespread species of the western states, slender and long-tailed like most members of the Mockingbird family.

[See attached blog post for images and video]

You can do little ten-minute lessons of this kind with any of the species in your bird guide that catch your interest. Pick one that is near you, or that looks striking, or that has a strange name, and explore.

In all these Friday Bird Families posts, our aim is not to present a specific set of facts to memorize. We hope instead to provide examples and starting points that you and your students can branch away from in many different directions. We also hope to show how you can help your students develop the kind of careful skills in reading, observation, and interpretation that they will need in all their future academic work.

What ornithological observations and naturalistical notes have you been making in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😊

❑ Homeschool birds: We think bird study is one of the best subjects you can take up in a homeschool environment. It’s suitable for all ages, it can be made as elementary or as advanced as you wish, and birds can be found just about anywhere at any season of the year. Why not track your own homeschool bird observations on the free eBird website sponsored by Cornell University. It’s a great way to learn more about what’s in your local area and about how bird populations change from season to season. 🐦

❑ Vade mecum: The front matter in your bird guide (riverhouses.org/books) (pages 6–13) explains a littleΒ bit about basic bird biology and about some of the technical terminology used throughout the book β€” why not have your students study it asΒ a special project. Have them note particularly the diagrams showing the parts ofΒ a bird (pages 10–11) so they’ll be able to tell primaries from secondaries and flanks from lores. πŸ¦‰

❑ Words for birds: You may not think of your homeschool dictionary (riverhouses.org/books) asΒ a nature reference, but aΒ comprehensive dictionary will define and explain many of the standard scientific terms you will encounter in biology and natural history, although it will not generally contain the proper names of species or other taxonomic groups that aren’t part of ordinary English. (In other words, you’ll find “flamingo” but not Phoenicopterus, the flamingo genus.) One of the most important things students should be taught to look for in the dictionary is the information on word origins: knowing the roots of scientific terms makes it much easier to understand them and remember their meaning.Β πŸ“–

❑ Come, here’s the map: Natural history and geography are deeply interconnected. One of the first questions you should teach your students to ask about any kind of animal or plant is, “What is its range? Where (in the world) does it occur?” Our recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes an excellent world atlas that will help your students appreciate many aspects of biogeography, the science of the geographical distribution of living things. 🌎

❑ Rivers in the sky: How many birds are migrating this week? You can find out from the BirdCast website, also sponsored by Cornell University, which offers daily bird migration forecasts in the spring and fall for the entire United States.Β πŸ¦…

❑ State birds: Two species in the Mockingbird family are United States state birds: the popular Northern Mockingbird (Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas) and the Brown Thrasher (Georgia).Β πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ

❑ Nature notes: This is one of our regular Friday Bird Families posts for homeschool naturalists. Print your own copy of our River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow along with us! You can also add your name to our free weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🐦 πŸ¦‰ πŸ¦† πŸ¦ƒ πŸ¦…

Filed Under: Friday Bird Families, Homeschool Natural History

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