McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader, Revised Edition · Lesson XXIX · Part 4: Riches, eagles and good neighbors
33. The Eagle
Goal: Your child reads an informational piece about eagles and names the kinds it describes.
You'll need
- The book, open to this lesson
- A notebook or lined paper and a pencil
What's in the book
A piece about the eagle: its strength and long life, then the golden eagle, the bald eagle (the American emblem, which steals fish from the fish-hawk) and the harpy eagle of South America. Definitions 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:
Supremacy, highest authority.
Imputed, ascribed to.
Emblem, that which is supposed to resemble some other thing in certain qualities, and is used to represent it.
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:
The eagle seems to enjoy a kind of supremacy over the rest of the inhabitants of the air.
Talk about it
SayWhat does the lesson say about the noble qualities people give the eagle? Are they all true?
SayHow long can an eagle live?
SayWhere does the golden eagle live? What does the bald eagle mostly eat?
SayWhy is the bald eagle important to Americans?
Let your child look back at the page to find answers.
Tell it back
Close the book. Your child tells three things they learned about eagles, one for each kind.
Copywork
Your child copies this from the book, slowly and neatly, minding every capital letter and mark of punctuation:
But many of the noble qualities imputed to him are rather fanciful than true.
Words to learn
Learn: supremacy, imputed, disdain, carcass, species, emblem, relinquish, sullen. Spell each aloud, then write it with its meaning.
Afterwards
Find a picture of a bald eagle, for example on a coin or a dollar bill.