In the Classroom This Month

We resumed school after the holidays with a new book for our group reading time. We are over halfway through "Little Women" now and have enjoyed learning about ALL of the adventures of the March family, not just the ones portrayed in the movies (although we love both the versions with Elizabeth Taylor and the more recent one with Winona Ryder).

Before we read in "Little Women", however, we read a few poems from "Favorite Poems Old and New". So far our favorite poem has been "The Night Wind" by Eugene Field:

The Night Wind

Have you ever heard the wind go "Yooooo"?
"Tis a pitiful sound to hear!
It seems to chill you through and through
With a strange and speechless fear.
"Tis the voice of the night that broods outside
When folk should be asleep,
And many and many's the time I've cried
To the darkness brooding far and wide
Over the land and the deep:
"Whom do you want, O lonely night,
That you wail the long hours through?"
And the night would say in its ghostly way:
"Yooooooooo!
Yooooooooo!
Yooooooooo!"

My mother told me long ago
(When I was a little tad)
That when the night went wailing so,
Somebody had been bad;
And then, when I was snug in bed,
Whither I had been sent,
With the blankets pulled by round my head,
I'd think of what my mother'd said,
And wonder what boy she meant!
And "Who's been bad to-day?" I'd ask
Of the wind that hoarsely blew,
And the voice would way in its meaningful way:
"Yooooooooo!
Yoooooooo!
Yoooooooo!"

That this was true I must allow-
You'll not believe it, though!
Yes, though I'm quite a model now,
I was not always so.

And if you doubt what things I say,
Suppose you make the test;
Suppose, when you've been bad some day
And up to bed are sent away
From mother and the rest-
Suppose you ask, "Who has been bad?"
And then you'll hear what's true;
For the wind will moan in its ruefulest tone:
"Yooooooooo!
Yoooooooo!
Yoooooooo!



Of course, this poem wouldn't apply to these sweet girls who were anything but bad while doing their laundry chores!