My guest this week on Daily Life’s poetry is Virginia Lowe, who lives in Melbourne, Australia. Dr. Lowe says that she has always written, modifying newsletters and maintaining a monthly blog to her favorite genre, writing poetry. Her husband, John, is also a poet. A favorite activity was to teach a creative writing group U3A (Third Age University). A unique fact about Virginia is that she studied the development of her two children and the answers to early childhood books at the start of adolescence. His research, including 5,500 pages of notes, was one of his studies for a doctorate. ~ David L. Harrison
Nurseries, the first poetry
“Uff Uff me, where my heart will break,” shouted her daughter (D) when she is presented, at 3 years old, with her new little brother (s). She already included speech words with her own language. S used the same sentence at almost the same age, begging grandfather to read a specific rhyme. D: “I’m going to Jack and Jill” his brother, fortunately sharing a bath. Did their deliberate overexploitation involve an emerging understanding of irony? The real / alleged concepts and beginner morality are in certain rhymes. “Why did he say” what a good boy am I “?” D asked me the little Jack Horner, then repeated the baby in his high chair. “It’s just a nonsense, little man” (s at 11 months).
Had shown the recognition of a poster in a room of public mothers in the city, where I had brought her to breastfeed at 3 months, waving his arms to Humpty Dumpty and vocalizing. I sung at her immediately: “Humpty Dumpty was sitting on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the King’s horses and all the king’s men could not put Humpty together.” There were always four or five pounds of nursery rhymes at home – ours or the library. Children knew that the same words could be illustrated by different images. Much older, almost 5 years old, came to run in the house and grabbed my hand, pulling me in her room: “Mom mom, there is something wrong!” Then when we arrived “it’s Humpty Dumpty!” Pointing the cover of a library book. He was dressed in tight fantasy clothes of a Victorian gentleman was his ovoid friend, as well as other familiar characters, simply sketched. There is no other book where the real words are well known, but the illustrations of the artists are completely different (except a couple for older children, for example “Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland”, where the familiar drawings of Sir John Tenniel have been redone by many others. He recognized several very different people, but thought that his exotic garb has made the value. versions, style and interpretation here too.
Studying children’s literature, I knew that criticisms and theorists underestimated young children. The children of the parents of the parents were read from the start, although the real published recordings did not start until the age of 2 years. I determined that I would keep a file closely, when I had them. Their father, a librarian, was in favor and often helped read and the hours it took in the evening to record everything, especially when the two children were at home during the day.
The nursery rhymes are not as inevitable for the education of children as for centuries, but they still have a lot to offer to infants and caregivers. First there is the interesting vocabulary, the sentences not available in the daily conversation, then the simple but memorable tunes and the actions that traditionally go with some. Same syntax. S to 3: “He is like King Cole” because he said “was he” “of the unknown song (Robin Hood) on the radio.
But these are not only the words and the tunes that I want to discuss here. We expected the books to be a comfort and a fun because they had always been for us parents, part of our life. For example, during a long trip by car, when it was not my turn to drive, I enlisted by singing all the nursery rhymes that I could think. It allowed me to sing each rhyme three times in a row, but more than three, or by repeating one that I had already sung, were immediately arrested.
They also understood about Rhyme, leading to a first joke from 2 years and 3 months. We had a book not of real nursery rhymes, but very simple verses. I have often stopped to fill the word rhymed. He would have shouted the “feet” several times to rhyme with “sweet”, and as a realistic gene is clear in the photo, but instead, he shouted “wheels” to the surprise and the pleasure of everyone.
Don’t wait. Start your baby on nursery rhymes today.
Virginia Lowe is an Australian poet. His collection, a poem for each of his ninety years, is “The Myopic’s View” (Ginninderrara Press). His book on young children and books is “stories, images and reality: two Tell children” (Routledge).