McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader, Revised Edition · Lesson XLIX · Part 6: Honesty, Crusoe and good-will

53. The Sandpiper, by Celia Thaxter

Goal: Your child reads a gentle poem about a little shore bird and explains why the poet calls it her friend.

⏱ About 20 minutes · 7 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 poem in four verses: the poet gathers drift-wood on a lonely beach with a sandpiper for company, as a storm comes on. Definitions follow. (Celia Thaxter's note was printed with Lesson XIII, Piccola.)

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:

    Sandpiper, a bird of the snipe family, found along the sea-coast.

    Bleached, whitened.

    Scud, fly swiftly.

    Wroth, angry.

    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. Read it slowly, like waves coming in. It begins:

    Across the lonely beach we flit,

    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

    SayWhere are the poet and the sandpiper? What is she gathering?

    SayWhat is the weather doing?

    SayWhy does she call the sandpiper her friend and comrade?

    SayWhy isn't she afraid for the bird in the storm?

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

  4. Remember Piccola

    SayCelia Thaxter also wrote Piccola. The book's note told us she spent her childhood on an island off New Hampshire. How might that show in this poem?

  5. Tell it back

    Your child tells, in prose, what the poet and the sandpiper do on the beach, and what she says to the bird at the end.

  6. Copywork

    These are the poem's last lines. Your child copies them as verse:

    For are we not God's children both,

    Thou, little sandpiper, and I?

  7. Words to learn

    Learn: sandpiper, drift-wood, bleached, tide, scud, fitful, stanch, wroth. Spell each aloud, then write it with its meaning.

Afterwards

Learn the last verse by heart.

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