Rosalie TP #12: Miss Mary Mack, Hand Games, and Rhyming

September 25, 2013

            This week, PJ had only five vocabulary words: rhyme, verse, rhythm, describe, and imagine. Marianna did the groundwork on Monday, so by Wednesday the words were more familiar to PJ. I had brought Dr. Seuss as the perfect rhyming book, but PJ informed that it was “not his level.” I asked him, “Do you know why I brought this book?” I asked him.

            “Because it rhymes,” he replied. I was satisfied—if he knew about rhyming, we could practice later and he could read something on his level. He chose to read Something Good by Robert Munsch. I was heartened by PJ laughing as he was reading and discussing the plot. The story is of a family’s trip to the grocery store. The father gets exasperated with his youngest daughter’s running around and choosing junk food, so he orders her not to move. She doesn’t, even when someone runs over her toe with a cart (“Wow!” PJ exclaimed) or when people knocked on her head. A saleswoman, believing the girl is a doll, puts a price tag on her nose and sticks her on a shelf with other dolls. PJ was incredulous. “But she’s heavier than the other dolls! And she looks skinnier!”

            After our story, we practiced rhyming. I started with a word (cat, or you), and he continued. We tried out different consonants until it made a real word. Then, I taught PJ how to play Miss Mary Mack, since that chant has so many good rhymes. He was smiling as I taught him but soon looked hesitant.

            “Is this a girl’s game? Or is it a boys’ and girls’ game?” he wanted to know.

            “I taught my brothers!” I told him. He wasn’t convinced.

            “How about we play rock, paper, scissors? Or catch?” he proposed, his eyes casting around the room in search of games appropriate for boys to play.

            “Do you only see girls playing these types of games?” I asked him. He nodded. “Well, we can play rock, paper, scissors one time, but I want to teach you this game because it rhymes. Okay?” It was a deal.

            After we tried Miss Mary Mack, I wrote the lyrics on the whiteboard so we could find the rhymes. I think at first PJ was thinking of alliteration (Mary and Mack?), but he quickly caught on. We finished up with his homework, in which he was required to make sentences with vocabulary words. Maybe they weren’t supposed to rhyme, but the directions weren’t clear. Our sentences rhymed just in case! We first would generate options of rhyming words and then create a sentence. PJ really enjoyed the rhyming, telling me for the word climb, “Oh, that’s easy! I climb with my lime.” We ran over time a little bit, but we got everything done. And we even had a litt