Home Geography for Primary Grades · Lesson XXIII · Unit 5: Rivers
23. The river (poem)
Goal: Your child enjoys the poem and explains what its pictures mean: a river's birthplace, its nurse, and its end.
You'll need
- The book open to the poem
- A geography notebook (any notebook kept just for these lessons) and a pencil
What's in the book
A poem in which a child asks a river where it comes from and where it goes, and the river answers: born in the mountain, nursed by April showers, cradled in a spring, then a noisy rill, then winding among meadows, and at last reaching the ocean. Questions ask what the poem's pictures mean.
The lesson, step by step
Read it aloud
Read the poem with two voices: you are the child asking, your child reads (or repeats) the river's answers.
"Oh, tell me, pretty river,
Whence do thy waters flow?
Old words
Explain: "whence" means "from where," "whither" means "to where," and "o'er-curtained" means covered over. A rill is a tiny stream; a madcap is a wild, playful one.
The river's life
Read the river's answer.
My birthplace was the mountain,
My nurse the April showers;
Ask the book's questions: Are rivers born? What is meant by "My nurse the April showers"? What does "I flirted with the flowers" mean?
The last verse
Read the last verse. Ask: Where does the river's journey end? Why does it say "my grave"?
A river near us
Ask: Where have you seen a river like the one in the poem? Your child writes one sentence about it.
Answers to the book's problems
Rivers are not really born; the poem pretends the river is a person. Its "birthplace" is the mountain where its spring is. "My nurse the April showers" means the spring rains fed it and made it grow, the way a nurse cares for a baby. "I flirted with the flowers" means it wound and played among the flowers on its banks. In the last verse the river reaches the ocean; there it stops being a river, so it calls the ocean its grave. Its water, of course, goes on, as the waterdrop's story showed.
Worked out for this site from the scan. If a number in your copy differs, trust the book.