🖋 🦃 WONDERFUL WORDS: Delicious “Thanksgiving Magic”

Happy Thanksgiving to all our readers and friends! During the upcoming holiday week, why not invite your homeschoolers to recite this poem of clever cookery by Rowena Bastin Bennett (1896–1981). It’s our just-for-fun homeschool poem-of-the-week for the fourth week of November, and it may even be about you!

Thanksgiving Magic

Thanksgiving Day I like to see
Our cook perform her witchery.
She turns a pumpkin into pie
As easily as you or I
Can wave a hand or wink an eye.
She takes leftover bread and muffin
And changes them to turkey stuffin’.
She changes cranberries to sauce
And meats to stews and stews to broths;
And when she mixes gingerbread
It turns into a man instead
With frosting collar ’round his throat
And raisin buttons down his coat.

Oh, some like magic made by wands,
 And some read magic out of books,
And some like fairy spells and charms
 But I like magic made by cooks!

Here’s hoping you and your family have a warm and happy Thanksgiving week. 🍽

What wonderful words and delicious literary discoveries have you and your students made in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ Oh, some like magic made by wands: Would it be pedantic to point out on Thanksgiving Day that the final quatrain of this poem is a lovely example of iambic tetrameter (iambics march from short to long) with a rhyme scheme of ABAB (wands–books–charms–cooks)? Yes, I suppose it would. But it is a lovely little piece to teach some basic poetic principles. Maybe wait a few days until after the leftovers are gone. 🥧

❡ But I like magic made by cooks: 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 — 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 Rowena Bastin Bennett) that are suitable for high school students and homeschool teachers. ✒️

❡ Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar to follow along with us as we visit fifty of our favorite friends over the course of the year, and add your name to our River Houses mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox every week. 📫

❡ Homeschool calendars: We have a whole collection of free, printable, educational homeschool calendars and planners available on our main River Houses calendar page. They will help you create a light and easy structure for your homeschool year. Give them a try today! 🗓

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❡ Join us! The aim of the River Houses project is to create a network of friendly local homeschool support groups — local chapters that we call “Houses.” Our first at-large chapter, Headwaters House, is now forming and is open to homeschoolers everywhere. Find out how to become one of our founding members on the Headwaters House membership page. 🏡