Classical Education Ideas: Rewriting Aesop

We've been enjoying Dorothy Maclaren's Esopus Hodie and using it both as a Latin reader and regular Language Arts. For each Aesop's fable, there's a poem version to read in English, then a Latin version in prose. An exact English translation is on the following page, as well as vocabulary and short questions which about the fable that a student can answer in Latin. For example, for The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg, here's the first stanza from the poem:

"A goose called Anserella
lived a happy, quiet life
in a nest by a brook,
and her master too
her eggs each day to his wife"

This is followed by: "Olim (Once upon a time) agricola prosperus anserum feminam possedit. Anserella Aesopius Aurifabra (a goldsmith) ab amici appellata est..." The poems, drawings, and the translations are funny and cute.

This has now become a fun Friday tradition with us; we leave the harder grammar Latin for other days. Because we've been studying different poetic forms (iamb, anapest, etc.), we've also taken it as an opportunity to write a poem in a specific style.

Here's our son's Goose poem:

There was a farmer of old
Who once found an egg of gold
Said the farmer, "Oh my!"
"How lucky am I!"
"I'm rich as the stars in the sky!"

He took the egg to his wife.
They'd be rich for the rest of their life-
She stopped him altho',
And spoke to him low
More than one will we need 'til we crow-

"Let's think a little bit more,"
"How can we increase our score?"
"One egg is not much..."
"A trifle as such..."
"'Twould be clever to fill a whole hutch!"

"I think a plan have I now..."
"A way to better endow..."
"Let's cut up the bird,"
"Without saying a word,"
"And we'll be richer than anyone's heard!"

The goose, poor soul, she was slain,
But the farmer saw to his pain,
No gold was inside
They moaned and they cried!
"'Twould been better if we'd never had tried!"

Stumped for a rhyme? Here's a neat free online Rhyming Dictionary. Rhymes are organized according to end rhymes, beginning rhymes, etc. Other useful links: AesopFables.com and a site for Aesop's Fables in Latin and English: BestLatin.net. Here's a site for Meter in Children's Poetry

We're going to be traveling for an Educators Conference in Pasco. We'll be back in the middle of next week, and post on Classical Education in the New Millennium, or why a Classical Education is a Ideal Preparation for a Flat World.

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