McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader, Revised Edition · Lesson XXXIX · Part 4: Lost Lucy, the Town Pump and the bobolink

45. The Bobolink, by Irving

Goal: Your child follows Irving's playful life story of the bobolink and explains the moral he draws from it.

⏱ About 35 minutes · 7 steps

Open it at the Internet Archive ↗

You'll need

  • The book, open to this lesson
  • A notebook and pencil

What's in the book

Irving's essay (from "Birds of Spring") about the bobolink: a joyful singer in May, a glutton by late summer, and finally a dish on a southern table, with a warning to little birds and little boys. Definitions and notes follow.

The lesson, step by step

  1. About the author

    Remind your child of the note about Washington Irving in Lesson XXXV: a New York writer known, the book says, for humor and elegant expression. Here he writes about a bird.

  2. Words and meanings

    Read some of the definitions at the end:

    Voluptuary, one who makes his bodily enjoyment his chief object.

    Gourmand, a glutton.

    Epicure, one who indulges in the luxuries of the table.

    Larder, a pantry.

    Eschew, to shun.

  3. Read aloud

    Take turns by paragraph. Read the May part brightly:

    The trees are now in their fullest foliage and brightest verdure

    He perches on the topmost twig of a tree, or on some long, flaunting weed

    Then the change:

    Wherever he goes, pop! pop! pop! every rusty firelock in the country is blazing away.

  4. Talk about it

    SayHow does the bobolink live in May? How does he change as summer goes on?

    Say"Such is the story of the bobolink; once spiritual, musical, admired, the joy of the meadows," How does that sentence end the story? What is the moral?

    SayWho is Irving really talking to at the end?

    SayFind a funny sentence. How does Irving's humor help the lesson?

  5. Tell it back

    Your child tells the bobolink's life in three parts: spring, late summer, autumn.

  6. Copywork

    Copy:

    He perches on the topmost twig of a tree, or on some long, flaunting weed

  7. Write (optional)

    Write a short fable about another animal that changes for the worse, with a moral at the end.

Tip

The next lesson, Bryant's "Robert of Lincoln," is a poem about the same bird. Read them a day apart and compare.

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