Henry W. Longfellow

Just wondering what are their ages?  My younger 2 children would still struggle with Longfellow, age 7 and 9, but my 12yo has begun to appreciate Longfellow and others. 

I might be out of turn here, but if your children don’t like poetry, I would rather focus on getting them to love poetry, rather than studying just one poet.  I know this is very un-Cm, but some CM homeschoolers have a poetry day and just read poetry of any kind. 

There is some lovely poetry, in so many different styles – keep exposing the children to it, and don’t put them off.  I think that is more important, but I am no CM expert.  Could you find poems about a subject they love.  My daughter is not fond of poetry, but read her an animal poem and she lights up, lapping up and comprehending every line, as she identifies with it.  There are also books, where an entire classic poem is the book, I like that for real little ones, who like the pictures. 

I am thinking perhaps, if you used an anthology, like the one by Helen Ferris, or from Google, and first tried various poets styles.   Sometimes even silly, less known than classic ones may be needed to get them into it, and then you can move on. 

HTH,

Lindy

Favorite poems old and new has many short and sweet poems. It is also arranged topically so you can choose that way, rather than by author. Perhaps that will help your kids find poets they do like.

We are doing Longfellow this year as well. The long poems can be intimidating but I have been reading one (the song of Hiawatha) for 10 min or so, once or twice a week until we are done. I discuss the meaning and help them “follow along” in the story line after each reading. Then the kids each get to pick one of his shorter ones to memorize and recite each term. They like some of his shorter ones a lot. My dd7 has memorized and is really enjoying The Arrow and the Song in particular. It is a very lovely and thoughtful poem. This system seems to be working for us.

I had to chuckle at Bookworm’s post because, I am REALLY liking Hiawatha so far! I have found several readings extremely beautiful in the flow of it, the language used as well as the mental pictures it paints.

We liked several of Christina Rosseti’s poems as well. Short and sweet, easy to remember. She was sort of a sad woman, though, if I remember correctly, and I had a hard time finding child appropriate information about her to present as a bio.

Good luck with it!

-Miranda

@Bookworm: thank you for the link!  We too are doing Longfellow this term and are enjoying it so far.  Have you seen the “Poetry for Young People” series?  Longfellow is on of the artists featured and the poems in these books are not very long, perhaps you can keep this series in mind if you should ever decided to revisit Longfellow.