The Mother Tongue, Book I: Lessons in Speaking, Reading and Writing English · Secs. 40–41 · Part 1: Part First
15. An account of a day, and The Song of the Brook
Goal: Your child writes a full account of a day in order and learns two stanzas of Tennyson by heart.
You'll need
- The book, open to this lesson
- Paper and pencil (a notebook kept just for this book works well)
What's in the book
Section 40 asks for a full account, in order, of what the child did yesterday. Section 41 gives two stanzas from Tennyson's "The Song of the Brook" with questions, to learn by heart and write from memory.
The lesson, step by step
Talk through yesterday
Before writing, talk through yesterday from waking up to bedtime. Your child tells it aloud in order. Help with "first", "after that", "in the afternoon".
Write the account
Your child writes 8 to 10 sentences about yesterday, in order. The book reminds us:
Remember the rules for the use of capital letters and marks of punctuation.
Check it gently
Read it aloud together. Pick one thing: is everything in the right order? Or are the capitals right? Choose whichever needs it most, and let your child fix it.
Read the brook poem
Read the two stanzas aloud. The brook is speaking.
I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
Talk about the book's questions: Have you seen a brook? What are "skimming swallows"? "netted sunbeams"? "sandy shallows"?
Learn it
Learn the first stanza today, four lines at a time. Notice the capital at the start of every line and the capital I.
What a good result looks like
Example (written for this guide, not from the book):
Yesterday I woke up early because it was raining. After breakfast I did my math lesson. In the afternoon the rain stopped, and I rode my bike to the park with Dad. We had soup for supper. Before bed I read two chapters of my book.
Afterwards
Finish learning the second stanza, then write both from memory (the book asks for this).
Answers to the book's problems
Skimming swallows: swallows flying low over the water, almost touching it. Netted sunbeams: sunlight on the stream bottom, broken into a net-like pattern by the ripples. Sandy shallows: places where the brook is shallow over sand. The last two lines say the brook keeps flowing while people come and go.
Worked out for this site from the scan. If a number in your copy differs, trust the book.