A Midwinter Poetry Study for Young Children

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Last week we sort of tipped our toes into real-life things after the holidays. Slowly, but surely, we trudged into our daily lives and routines. It was like a bridge between the holiday season and the ordinary time. The tree was still up, the halls were still decked, but the merry making was definitely less intense. Even our co-op remained closed last week because of COVID concerns. But this week all that changes and everything goes back to normal including our weekly homeschool Co-op.

For new homeschoolers, I think the term homeschool pod is being used to describe what we pre-COVID homeschoolers called Co-ops. It’s mainly a group of families that have come together to offer educational opportunities to our homeschooled children and to give them a chance to meet up with other kids their own age.

This semester, I will once again be teaching Miss C’s class which consists of Kindergarten through second grade. Our studies are based on the curriculum suggestions of the Five In a Row Books.

This week we read Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening, by Robert Frost.

My Lesson plans:

In Five in a Row, the idea is to read the book to the child for five days in a row. Each time the child gets more familiar with the book and illustrations. When done in a co-op setting, the parent reads the book to the child four times, and then we read it for the last time in class and do projects and follow rabbit trails related to the book.

About the poet:

Robert Frost was born in California in 1874. That was the same year as the Great Chicago Fire and the year Levi Strauss got a patent on the blue jean! He lived a long successful life as a poet and died in 1963, several years after reading one of his poems at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy.

Frost wrote mostly about the sights and sounds of New England. He believed that every poem should start with delight!

Here is Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening:

Whose woods these are I think I know.   
His house is in the village though;   
He will not see me stopping here   
To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   
To stop without a farmhouse near   
Between the woods and frozen lake   
The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   
To ask if there is some mistake.   
The only other sound’s the sweep   
Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   
But I have promises to keep,   
And miles to go before I sleep,   
And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost

This poem has an AABA pattern in the first three verses. In the last verse all of the lines rhyme, but the last and most famous line is repeated. In this book, the illustrator, Susan Jeffers, stays true to the poem, while telling a tale of her own through the illustrations.

We read two other Frost poems in class: The Cow in Apple Time and The Road Not Taken. Both of those are beautifully illustrated in Poetry for Kids, Robert Frost, Edited by Jay Parini.

The poem also uses personification – the horse is perplexed as to why they are stopping and rings his sleigh bells!

Geography:

Robert Frost was born in California and wrote about New England. New England consists of six states: Main, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Connecticut. This printable had a good map for those Northeastern States.

Rabbit Trails:

There are 450 words for Snow in Scottish! Here are a few!

Music:

I have a set of sleigh bells! They belonged to my grandfather and they are very old, but very musical and heavy. When I came to that part in the story for my class, my granddaughter rang the jingle bells for them. You could introduce kids to Sleigh Ride with this unit, or a version of Jingle Bells with bells.

Science:

I made sugar crystals and brought them in for the kids to look at with an explanation of how snow is made. We read The Secret Life of a Snowflake: An Up-Close Look at the Art and Science of Snowflakes by  Kenneth Libbrecht.

We also used a globe to illustrate how the tilt of the world going around the sun gives us winter and summer and to help explain the solstices.

Arts and Crafts:

We made three crafts with this book.

We cut regular snow flakes with paper and scissors. The kids did an amazing job with that!

We also made a gigantic 3D snowflake using white paper bags. I used this tutorial on Facebook. Because my students are K – 2nd grade, we did not use hot glue. I used Elmer’s glue and taught the kids how to make a stripe of glue down the middle of the back and across the bottom. I let the kids do their own bag stacking too. We did this immediately at the beginning of class, so that there would be time for the glue to dry. While the kids were making their snow globes, I did all of the heavy cutting with Cutco scissors. Little hands would not have been able to do that as easily, especially with using kid scissors.

But I think the most fun we had was making snow globes!

I purchased plastic jars from Michael’s. Baby food jars might also work.

Then I purchased these little figurines, as well as some other small plastic animals that I got at Michael’s.

We also needed glycerin and glitter.

I wanted the bottom of my snow globe to look like there was snow on the ground. Packing material was hot glued to the lid. Super glue works well too.

I let each child come to the table and pick out their own figurines. Everyone had two. They got to place them on the lid the way they wanted them. My adult helpers hot glued them in place.

Adult helpers put distilled or purified water into the jar as far as they could without spilling. They also added generous drops of glycerin to the water. The kids added the glitter a few pinches at a time. Then the helpers put the lid on the jar and tightened them as much as they could. The kids and their moms loved the results!

All in all, I think it was a fun and successful look at Robert Frost’s delightful poem!