Home Geography for Primary Grades · Lesson XXXVI · Unit 7: Plants
36. Summer rain (poem)
Goal: Your child enjoys the poem and connects it to what plants need: on a hot, dry day everything longs for rain.
You'll need
- The book open to the poem
- Ideally a hot day, or a rainy summer day
What's in the book
A poem asking the gentle summer rain to come: the lily droops, the landscape quivers in the heat, the cattle pant under a tree, and the earth looks up in vain until the rain comes to fill the streams and soften the hills with mist.
The lesson, step by step
Read it aloud
Read the poem slowly.
Oh, gentle, gentle summer rain!
Ask: Who is the poet talking to?
A hot day
Read the second verse again.
The cattle pant beneath the tree;
Ask: What is it like in this verse? Why does the earth "look up"?
Connect to the last lesson
Ask: From the last lesson, what do plants need? (warmth and water) In this poem, which one is missing?
Words
Explain a few old words: "pine" here means to droop and long for something; "brim" means to fill to the top.
Notice it
On the next hot day, look at how plants droop in the afternoon. After a summer shower, look again: how do they look now?
Afterwards
Read the poem again on the next rainy summer day.