McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader, Revised Edition · Lesson LXXXIX · Part 9: History, seasons and home

93. My Mother's Grave

Goal: Your child reads a short, serious remembrance and talks about kindness to parents.

⏱ About 20 minutes · 5 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 short prose piece: a grown person stands at their mother's grave and remembers one evening of unkindness as a child, a glass of water given crossly to a sick mother, and the apology that came too late. Definitions follow. No author is named.

The lesson, step by step

  1. Read it aloud

    Read it aloud to your child, or let your child read it slowly. It begins at the grave:

    But the varied events of thirteen years had not effaced the remembrance of that mother's smile.

  2. Talk about it

    SayWhat happened on the evening the writer remembers?

    SayWhy couldn't the child sleep?

    SayWhy didn't the apology happen?

    SayWhat does the writer want children who still have their parents to remember?

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

  3. Tell it back

    Your child says, in a few sentences, what the writer learned and what we can learn from it.

  4. Copywork

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

    I went and brought her the water, but I did not do it kindly.

  5. Words to learn

    Learn: mournful, realize, varied, effaced, petulantly, resolved, ingratitude, manifold. Spell each aloud, then write it with its meaning.

Tip

This is a sad piece. Keep the talk gentle; the point is simply to be kind at home today.

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