The Mother Tongue, Book I: Lessons in Speaking, Reading and Writing English · Secs. 146–147 · Part 1: Part First
43. Describing words in Hiawatha
Goal: Your child finds the words a poet uses to describe things and uses new words in sentences of their own.
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 146 asks the child to find the words and phrases in "Hiawatha's Sailing" that describe the river, the birch tree, the canoe, the fir tree, the quills and other things. Section 147 lists twenty-four words from the poem (cedar, pliant, summit, sombre, crevice, supple ...) to use in sentences.
The lesson, step by step
Say the lines you learned
Your child says as much of the last eleven lines as they can from memory.
Hunt for describing words (Section 146)
Go back through the poem together. For each thing on the book's list, find the words that describe it. Make a two-column list: the thing, and its words.
Like a yellow leaf in autumn,
Talk about them
Ask: Which describing words make the clearest picture? Why do you think Longfellow said the canoe was "like a yellow water-lily"?
New words (Section 147)
Talk over the harder words: pliant, summit, hewed, fibrous, sombre, fissure, crevice, supple, sinew. Your child writes eight sentences, at least four about things that are not in the poem, as the book suggests.
Check it gently
For each sentence: does it show the meaning? If not, help your child add a detail. One or two fixes only.
What a good result looks like
Example (written for this guide, not from the book):
The willow branches are pliant enough to bend into a hoop.
We climbed to the summit of the hill before lunch.
Water leaked through a crevice in the old bucket.
Afterwards
Finish learning the last eleven lines and write them from memory.
Answers to the book's problems
Section 146 (words from the passage): river, rushing; bark, yellow; birch tree, tall and stately; canoe, light, swift, and like a yellow leaf or water-lily; forest, solitary; sun, the great Sun, from sleep awaking; cedar's branches, strong and pliant; roots of the larch, fibrous, tough; fir tree, tall and sombre; tree from which the hedgehog looked, hollow; quills, shining, like arrows; arrows, little shining; necklace, gleaming.
Worked out for this site from the scan. If a number in your copy differs, trust the book.