McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader, Revised Edition · Lesson IX · Part 2: Perseverance, fairy tales and kindness

13. Meddlesome Matty

Goal: Your child reads a story poem with expression, retells it, and explains its lesson.

⏱ About 25 minutes · 6 steps

Open it at the Internet Archive ↗

You'll need

  • The book, open to this lesson
  • A notebook or lined paper and a pencil

What's in the book

A story poem about Matilda, whose one bad habit is meddling: she tries on Grandmamma's spectacles and opens her snuff-box, with sneezing results. Definitions and Exercises follow.

The lesson, step by step

  1. Words and meanings

    The new words are at the end of the lesson, under Definitions. The small number in front of each word is the paragraph or verse where it is used. Read them together before the lesson. A few of them:

    Meddling, interfering without right.

    Amiss, wrong, faulty.

    Woeful, sad, sorrowful.

    Refrain, to keep from.

    Ask your child to find two of these words in the lesson and read the sentence each one is in.

  2. Read it aloud

    Read the poem aloud to your child first, then let your child read it. It begins with Matilda's one fault:

    Oh, how one ugly trick has spoiled

    The sweetest and the best!

    Then have your child read it a second time, more smoothly: the first reading is for the meaning, the second for the sound and rhythm.

  3. Talk about it

    SayWhat did Matilda do? How was she punished?

    SayWhat excuse did she give herself before opening the box?

    SayWhat effect did it have on her?

    SayWhy is meddling with other people's things a bad habit, even when nothing breaks?

    Let your child look back at the page to find answers.

  4. Tell it back

    Your child tells the story in prose (ordinary sentences), as if telling it to Grandmamma.

  5. Copywork

    Your child copies Matilda's excuse as verse, with capitals and punctuation as printed:

    Beside, what can there be amiss

    In opening such a box as this?

  6. Words to learn

    Learn: qualities, meddling, forthwith, spied, amiss, woeful, tingling, refrain. Spell each aloud, then write it with its meaning.

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