McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader, Revised Edition · Lesson XVII · Part 3: Courage, the sea and the frost
21. A Ship in a Storm
Goal: Your child reads an informational piece about storms at sea and explains how sailors and lighthouses keep ships safe.
You'll need
- The book, open to this lesson
- A notebook or lined paper and a pencil
What's in the book
A prose piece: a calm sea turns stormy, the crew makes ready, a man is rescued from overboard, and then lighthouses, fog-bells and life-saving stations are described. Definitions and many Exercises follow.
The lesson, step by step
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:
Gale, a wind storm.
Heaves, pitches up and down.
Billows, waves.
Gratitude, thankfulness.
Ask your child to find two of these words in the lesson and read the sentence each one is in.
Read it aloud
Your child reads it aloud, a paragraph at a time. It begins with a question:
Did you ever go far out upon the great ocean?
At last, the gale comes like a vast moving mountain of air.
Talk about it
SayWhen is it dangerous to be at sea? What do sailors then do?
SayRelate the story of the man overboard.
SayHow are vessels warned of danger in a fog?
SayWhat is said of a sailor's life?
Let your child look back at the page to find answers.
Tell it back
Close the book.
SayPretend you are a sailor on that ship. Tell me about the storm from start to finish.
Copywork
Your child copies this from the book, slowly and neatly, minding every capital letter and mark of punctuation:
Take it all in all, a sailor's life is a very hard one.
Words to learn
Learn: echoed, gale, heaves, billows, desperate, gratitude, luxuries. Spell each aloud, then write it with its meaning.
Afterwards
Look at a picture of a lighthouse. Talk about where the nearest one to you might be.