This morning, this little man amazed me. He does this quite often actually!
Each morning, after the boys and I do our Bible, History, and Literature together, they each go to their rooms to do their other assignments. Ethan's first task is to complete his Daily Agenda. We got this idea from
Confessions of a Homeschooler. He enjoys each activity, but he especially likes reading his "Family Ways" and his poems. Honestly, since we recently moved, I have been trusting that he is completing his Daily Agenda on his own. It gives me a few minutes to change out laundry, clean up the kitchen, or print out lesson materials.
Last year, we used the kindergarten curriculum from the
Institute of Excellence in Writing. In their Primary Arts of Language curriculum, they introduce a new poem each week. At first, honestly, I thought this was a little silly. But as we progressed through the year, I noticed how much Ethan enjoyed reading, illustrating, & reciting the poems. They also used the poems to teach phonetic rules. Each day, he would circle or underline different rhyming words, certain words using short vowels, "squealy e's," etc.
When I was planning his curriculum for this year, I wanted to be able to introduce more poems to him. After some research, I found how helpful memorizing poetry is for language development. I found a list of poems appropriate for first graders to learn, so we've added one each week to his Daily Agenda.
So...this morning, when I heard him RECITING some of the poems I've placed in his binder, I was amazed! It just shows that REPETITION is KEY! He reads every single poem every single morning. And now he knows several poems by heart!
He was quite happy to make a video reciting two of the poems. He used the little space heater as his "microphone" and he even decided to make a grand entrance on the second poem. :) He's quite the entertainer!
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