I enjoyed reading Great Writing from a Small Child. When I read the post, my 5-year-old had written a poem. The requirements were the poem had to be about you and the end of every line must rhyme with dog. Can you believe not many words qualify? His poem:

I have a dog.
I like to sing about a frog.
In P.E., I sometimes jog.
I never go out in the fog.

The second line is too true. He sings the “Life Cycle of a Frog” many times in a week since learning that in pre-school. I had fun helping him with this. I wish homework with all the kids would be this enjoyable.

We started by coming up with words that rhymed with dog. He went through the whole alphabet. We added frog.

Next, he came up with the first line easily. I told him to pick one of the words and try to make a sentence out of it about him. If the “og” word didn’t come at the end, I talked it out with him to rearrange the sentence until it did.

I loved writing poetry when I was a kid. The only time I do it as an adult is for someone’s birthday or a special occasion. I did one for my husband’s 30th and 40th birthdays.

How I wish I had those poems I wrote. I save my kids’ poems. They don’t do one often. Last year in third grade, my son’s class did poems where the first word or two had to begin with specific works:

I am…

I wonder…

I hear…

I see…

I want…

I am…

I thought that was a wonderful idea. He wrote an amazing poem. This from a kid who hated reading and writing — so it surprised me. It was that good.

Maybe we adults should try the above and see what we get.

This past entry addresses the dying art of letter writing (by hand and snail mail!). Cursive writing becoming a thing of the past looks at cursive writing’s decline in the classroom. Students typically learn cursive writing in third grade and I believe this should continue — but not with a heavy focus on getting it perfect.

Rather, the kids should remember how to do it and legibly. Just like learning new spelling words, they need to learn to read and write cursive. Neatness, like art, is subjective. Some people are good at it and some people aren’t.

Kids today have to learn more than kids did 10 years ago. They have computers and keyboarding added to their list of things to learn plus 10 more years of history. Remember memorizing the American presidents and the years they served? I clearly remember that from 9th grade, but I’ve forgotten the order and years. Is there any point memorizing this? Well, perhaps, it gives us an idea about when the president was in office. For instance, we know Lyndon B. Johnson didn’t serve anywhere near Lincoln or Adams — but somewhere around Kennedy and Carter.

My parents took me to Washington, DC for the first time when I was about 10 years old. We visited the Smithsonian museums where I bought presidential flash cards (OK, I was a nerd … sometimes). I learned them on my own, but promptly forgot them by the time I had to learn them again in 9th grade.

We also memorized poems. I still recall the ones I had to say over and over:

* Shel Silverstein’s Captain Hook from Where the Sidewalk Ends in 2nd grade.

* The Highwayman in 7th grade.

* Edgar Allan Poe’s Eldorado in 7th grade

* Kipling’s If

* Mark Anthony’s Caesar speech in 10th grade

* Shakespeare’s All the World’s a Stage

I hated memorizing poems at the time. But you know what? Some of these have become my favorites. I can still recite Eldorado without help. There was a time when I was into finding poems like The Highwayman and discovered The Shooting of Dan McGrew by Robert Service. It turned out my grandmother was also a fan of his work and we spent a little time discussing his poems. As a result of this interest, I started writing epic style poems. Wish I had them (That’s why I try to pick some of my kids’ work and kept them in a safe place.).

In middle school today, kids learn about one poem per six weeks — depending on the class. The poems are tied to the curriculum.