McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader, Revised Edition · Lesson LXVI · Part 7: Lost and found

70. The Elephant

Goal: Your child reads an informational piece about elephants and retells two of its true stories.

⏱ About 30 minutes · 6 steps

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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 elephant: its size, trunk and tusks, the Asiatic and African kinds, and its gentleness when tamed. Anecdotes follow: an elephant in London that blew a sixpence within reach, a soldier who hid under an elephant, and the nabob's elephant that stepped carefully around the sick. Definitions 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:

    Quadruped, an animal having four feet.

    Proboscis, snout, trunk.

    Docile, teachable.

    Nabob, a prince in India.

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

  2. Read it aloud

    Your child reads it aloud, a paragraph at a time. It begins with a description:

    He has two large tusks, which form the ivory of commerce, and a trunk, or proboscis, at the end of the nose.

  3. Talk about it

    SayHow does the Asiatic elephant differ from the African one?

    SayWhat are tame elephants used for?

    SayHow did the London elephant get the sixpence?

    SayWhat did the nabob's elephant do during the epidemic? What does that show?

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

  4. Tell it back

    Close the book. Your child chooses one of the elephant stories and tells it as if they saw it happen.

  5. Copywork

    Your child copies this from the book, slowly and neatly, minding every capital letter and mark of punctuation:

    Their attachment to their masters is remarkable; and they seem to live but to serve and obey them.

  6. Words to learn

    Learn: quadruped, pendulous, commerce, proboscis, stratagem, docile, asylum, unwieldy, epidemic. Spell each aloud, then write it with its meaning.

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