S6 E9 | The Art of Poetry (Jeannie Fulbright with Shiela Catanzarite)

S6 E9 | The Art of Poetry (Jeannie Fulbright with Shiela Catanzarite)

Show Notes:

Our special guest, Shiela Catanzarite, shares the importance of poetry in a child's education. Not only has God given us poetry through His Word, but, as He tells us in Ephesians 2:10, our lives are a form of poetry to the Lord. Neuroscience supports the power of poetry. Charlotte Mason, always ahead of her time, encouraged us to ensure our children interact with poetry daily. Jeannie and Shiela discuss these truths and share ideas on how to easily incorporate this beautiful art form into your homeschool, making it a memorable, special, and joyous time as a family.

Guest biography

Shiela Catanzarite is a 20 year Charlotte Mason veteran homeschooler. She’s worked as Jeannie Fulbright’s editor and designer for 10+ years helping develop Jeannie’s Apologia science curriculum and most recently her Charlotte Mason products published through Jeannie Fulbright Press. Shiela earned her bachelor’s degree in Special Education and her master’s in Christian Education. She is pursuing her Doctor of Education studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. Shiela and her husband Bruce became empty nesters in 2017. Both of their daughters attended private colleges on scholarship and went on to pursue graduate studies. She attributes her daughters’ love for learning to homeschooling with Charlotte Mason’s philosophy and methodology. Shiela is currently a Language Communication Coach, working one on one with students who have language learning and communication difficulties. In addition, she teaches private middle and high school communication classes that focus on speaking and writing. Shiela has a passion for poetic language and most recently completed her first poetry curriculum, Living Verse, published by Jeannie Fulbright Press.

Host biography

Jeannie Fulbright, a 24-year veteran homeschooler, is the author of the #1 best-selling, multi award-winning Apologia Young Explorer science series: Exploring Creation with Astronomy, Chemistry and Physics, Botany, Zoology, and Anatomy & Physiology. She is also the author of the action-packed historical time travel book series Rumble Tumbles Through Time, as well as preschool science books and activity kits, the Charlotte Mason Heirloom Planner, and many high-quality Charlotte Mason based products. Jeannie and her husband Jeff became empty nesters in 2019. All four of their children all went to the University of Georgia on scholarship (homeschooling works!). For more than 20 years Jeannie has traveled around the country speaking to homeschoolers at conventions, covering a plethora of topics from Charlotte Mason to marriage and prayer.

Resources

A Child’s Anthology of Poetry by Elizabeth Hauge Sword

A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson

Poetry.com (search for Longfellow, A.A. Milne, Goeth, Kipling, Frost, Wordsworth, Yeats)

Archive.org has digital poetry anthologies and other books to borrow or download (if they are out of print). Do a search for words such as "children anthology poetry".

Living Verse Poetry Curriculum

Connect

Jeannie Fulbright | Instagram | Facebook | Facebook Group | Pinterest | Website

Email Jeannie at [email protected]

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Show Transcript:

Jeannie Fulbright Welcome to the Charlotte Mason Show, a show that discusses Charlotte Mason's philosophy, principles, and methods. It is our hope that each session on the Charlotte Mason Show will mentor you in the Charlotte Mason model, inspire you with ideas, and offer practical ways to implement Charlotte Mason's unique and effective methodology in your homeschool. I'm your host, Jeannie Fulbright, and I am so glad you joined me today. Today's episode is brought to you by Medi-Share. Find out how this affordable Christian alternative to traditional health insurance can help you at MyChristianCare.org.

Jeannie Fulbright Well, I am so excited about what we're going to be talking about today and our special guest that we have because poetry is one of those subjects that everybody wishes they could incorporate into their homeschool, but so many of us were taught poetry in a way that kind of sucked the life out of it. And we don't know how to teach poetry to our children. But our guest today is going to give us her brilliant explanation for how we teach poetry, how to incorporate poetry. And she has some special stuff that she's creating just for the homeschool community that we'll talk about at the end. So welcome, Shiela Catanzarite. We're so glad to have you today.

Shiela Catanzarite Thank you, Jeannie. I'm glad to join you.

Jeannie Fulbright So Shiela and I go way back. We have been friends forever. Our children grew up together. And Shiela, being a brilliant wordsmith, became my editor a decade or more ago, and so we have been working together for a lot of years. And Shiela has been just an instrumental help to me in so many ways. But God has— both of us are empty nesters, but God has taken her on a very interesting journey which has brought her to this new place. And Shiela, why don't you tell us about your journey and—your homeschool journey—and where you are now and how you came to have the passion for poetry that you have now.

Shiela Catanzarite Okay. Well, like you said, Jeannie, we homeschooled together. And you were my inspiration. You were my curriculum guide. You were my— the person I clung to at the conferences because I just admired so much your Charlotte Mason methodology that you used in your homeschool and I became really interested. So when my girls were young— we had two daughters, and now they're both in graduate school. But when they were young, we just looked at a lot of homeschool philosophies. And I fell in love with Charlotte Mason because Charlotte Mason philosophy focused so much on language, so much on narration— verbal narration, written narration. And I have a passion for writing, as you do, Jeannie. And I just felt that the copywork, all the elements, the things we love about Charlotte Mason really fit with my personal philosophy of education. I have a bachelor's degree in special education and then I have a master's in Christian education. I'm actually going back and starting in the fall to pursue my doctorate in education. So education has really been a passion all the way through, and it was a joy homeschooling our daughters. And I want to say that both girls have gone on to graduate school, and one of the elements of a Charlotte Mason education that I feel like made such a difference in our homeschool was the concept of ample free time. Charlotte Mason was very big on providing lots of free time for your student to develop into who they are. And I think that our daughters' passions for the plans that God has for their life and the vision that they had young, the idea of giving them ample time and opportunity to pursue those passions and develop those gifts and talents, that was the reason why homeschooling was so successful for us. And when they went on to apply for college, because they were homeschoolers, they really stood out. They had opportunities to establish a homeless shelter program for children. They were able to travel to missions trips, volunteer at the hospital, lots of different things that shaped who they were, who God was calling them to be, was because we homeschooled. And so I really believe that a lot of the success—I don't believe—I know the success that we had through homeschooling and our daughters leaving the homeschool well-equipped to step on the path God had for their lives was because we followed Charlotte Mason.

Jeannie Fulbright Well, and I know your girls love the Lord and your oldest daughter is in medical school and your youngest daughter is pursuing her master's degree in—what is it? Global business?

Shiela Catanzarite Global business.

Jeannie Fulbright Yeah. And so your children just have a love for the Lord and a passion to pursue their interests. And you developed that through such a beautiful way of homeschooling them. And I just always loved seeing that they had such a vibrant love for life, both of your girls. And I was always a little bit intimidated by your complete command of the English language. And I was so grateful for it because you were my editor. But I'm so excited to see what God is doing and how God has just positioned you, over the years since you became an empty nester, to have this new passion for the specific area of language. And so I'm really excited what God is doing through that. So why don't you tell us a little bit about why poetry?

Shiela Catanzarite Well, when I think about why poetry, three things come to mind. And the first thing is because God chose to communicate to us through poetic language. We see in the Scripture a variety of poetic forms and some of the authors of the Scriptures engaging in poetry to appeal to our hearts, our souls, our emotions, our senses. So we begin to see that God has chosen to communicate to us and connect with us through poetry, one of the primary languages in the Scripture. And it's interesting that in Ephesians 3:8-9, or Ephesians 3:10 specifically, says, "For we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." And that's a familiar verse. But when you look at that word, we are God's handiwork, God's workmanship. The word for workmanship is a Greek word poiema. And that word is, where we get our word for poetry. And so I thought it's such a beautiful— that essentially we are God's poetry, we are God's workmanship. And so this idea of poetry has its roots in craftsmanship. You have structure. If you're building a building, you have the structure, and then you have the artistry and the beauty.

Jeannie Fulbright Yeah, I see. I listened to some podcast, The Bible Project and another one, that discussed the Hebrew language and a lot of the biblical language, the New Testament, but especially the Old Testament, even Genesis is a poetic— the whole Bible, all of it uses poetic devices. The Bible is poetry. And I think sometimes we miss that because of the translation that we don't see in the original Hebrew or Greek, how much poetry is a part of what God did when he communicated his truth to us.

Shiela Catanzarite Mhm. Yes, Jeannie, that's so interesting. And that's where the beauty comes from with poetry because it is a gift from God. I believe poetry is a gift and I believe it's a gift that we have neglected many times because it's been taken into the schools and taught as an academic subject— a dry, dull academic subject that the students are graded on and tested on. And poetry is actually an art. The neuroscience behind poetry is fascinating when you study that there is a region of the brain, Jeannie, where only poetic language is processed. So most language is processed on the left side of the brain. But when you look at poetry, it's processed on the side of the brain— the region where we process music and art. It's that region of the brain where we have emotion and the reward center of feeling. And so God wanted us to know him through our emotion, through this beautiful language where he could communicate his love for us. And so I love that part of the neuroscience.

Jeannie Fulbright You know what is so interesting is when I think about— since I was a child, I have loved reading and literature, but I loved poetry. I fell in love with poetry when in the eighties or might have in the seventies actually, I think that Where the Sidewalk Ends came out, the Shel Silverstein poetry book, and I memorized every single poem in that book. And what was so interesting is that I fell in love. I did have a lot of feelings. When you're reading poetry, there is a lot of emotion that goes into it, a lot of joy and laughter or just a sense of wonder. And I think that I didn't even realize that that's actually neuroscientifically how God designed poetry to affect us.

Shiela Catanzarite Yes, that's right. And our brains are designed for poetic language. And so if we neglect poetry in our homeschool education, we are neglecting a part of the brain that God designed to be developed, and our children can not have a full language develop cognitively without poetry study. And I love how Charlotte Mason really advocated for poetry study every single day. She believed that children should read it out loud everyday. Not only read it out loud, but should be read to. And one of my favorite quotes from Charlotte Mason talking about poetry is she says, "A beautiful word deserves to be beautifully said." So that idea when we're starting to recite poetry or read poetry out loud, the children are developing those articulation skills. They're developing the speaking skills. And the brain is processing beautiful language and how to speak beautiful words in a beautiful way. And I love that she said that. Another thing Charlotte Mason said about poetry is she quoted, "Poetry takes first rank as a means of intellectual culture." And I love that. That's a term we don't hear a very often: intellectual culture. And we need to explore that more. But she felt like the highest level of intellectual processing happened with poetry because of the complexity of the language and the figurative language. She also said that poetry "supplies us with tools for the modeling of our lives," and that "lines of poetry influence our living." So we do see that poetry, because of the emotional effect, it has the ability to inspire and influence our children at a very young age. So you begin to see it helps processing verbal language, it helps critical thinking, processing our intellectual culture. And it helps with just being able to gain insight for living and interpret some of these messages and themes that our poets bring to us.

Jeannie Fulbright Well, it sounds like poetry is a lot more important than we realize and that it is an art. But it also is just a really important part of the development of us as human beings in so many different ways. I love that intellectual culture. What a beautiful phrase. I don't think I have let my eyes linger on that phrase before and I love that. So poetry is important. We all— now we're even more convinced that poetry is important, perhaps a little intimidated, even more intimidated than we were before. What can parents do? What can we just even maybe start this summer as a habit in the development of poetry? You said Charlotte Mason believed children should interact with poetry every day. How? How can we do that? Can you just give us some tools that would help us to launch into this endeavor of filling our children's lives with this beautiful art form and maybe learning to appreciate it ourselves, since most of us had an education that sort of deadened the whole subject for us and drained it dry of every living beauty that it might have possessed if we hadn't have been studying an intellectual dry way.

Shiela Catanzarite Sure. I would say the best way is just begin to read poetry out loud every day to your children. And we know that studies show that nursery rhymes are very important for the development of children's language. And so we need to start as young as possible. Even poems that have been put to music are a good way. Riding in the car. You can get nursery rhymes that are put to music. That's a good way to expose the young child. Reading poems to children. They don't have to understand every single word. Charlotte Mason said they will pick out as much as they're able to digest. Don't be afraid to give them poetry with vocabulary that they have not been exposed to. That's how our children learn vocabulary, by being exposed to new words. So I would say begin to maybe play it. Play songs, nursery rhymes to your preschoolers, babies. I would say, as they get a little bit older, start reading poetry out loud. Poetry is an oral tradition that was that was first meant for hearing. And so read it out loud. And I would say go to the library with your child and make it a field trip. Today we're going to choose poetry to study over the summer. This summer is a great time to begin getting your children interested in poetry and listening to it. Let them pick out a book. And, Jeannie, you probably have a resource you loved when you were homeschooling with poems.

Jeannie Fulbright I did. I had a book called A Child's Anthology of Poetry, edited by Elizabeth Hague, Sword. And that book had beautiful poems in there and a lot of really— some of the poets that Charlotte Mason recommended, like Longfellow and Wordsworth. And there's Emily Dickens, there's William Blake. There's so many— Robert Louis Stevenson, of course, which is beautiful. The Child's Garden of verses, which we had. Walt Whitman is in here. It's got Tennyson. And in this book, since it's a child's anthology of poetry, what I love about it—and this is probably out of print because this is an old book that I've had for—my kids are all, as you know, grown and gone—but you could probably even find it on Archive.org and download a PDF of it. I'm not sure. I'm not 100% sure when it was published, but that's an option. And you can also probably find on Archive.org, if you click on the book section there, you can probably find child's poetry. If you just do a search for child's poetry in the book section or children's poetry, you could probably find a bunch that you could just download for free, with just anthologies of different poems and poetry, both old poems and newer poems. And, you know, wanted to mention that one subject— actually, we'll get to that when we talk about what you're creating. So let's launch into that. So we've talked about some ideas for getting kids— just exposing them to poetry, reading it aloud. And I hear a lot about people having poetry tea time. What do you suggest? Do they recite poetry? What do they do during tea time?

Shiela Catanzarite Well, I would suggest, first of all, listening to the poem and then having the child narrate back. Of course, narration is important for verbal skills and thinking. Narrate back what they heard in the poem, and we don't expect them to get all of the rhythm and the rhyme right, but the general idea of what they heard. I recommend doing a visual narration. That's something that's fun to do. You hear a poem about a bird and you do a visual narration. You can do a written narration. You know, writing is— poetry creates very flexible writers.

Jeannie Fulbright That's wonderful. I feel like a child who is listening to a poem and then doing a written narration or a visual narration of it, whatever they're doing, whether it's their own work or cutting things out or creating something, even if it's origami, whatever it is, it's going to really solidify their memory. It's going to create memories of that poem. It's going to become a part of who they are. It's going to be their own knowledge, their own poetry that they own in their soul, which I love. So do you have any other suggestions for poetry tea time?

Shiela Catanzarite I think honoring the poet is important. I think that you could talk a little bit about the poet, learn about the history, why they got into poetry. So I think, of course, including that would be nice. The child could also do a copywork of the poem and present it. That could be part of the poetry tea time. So there are many different ideas, but the main idea is beginning to engage with poetry every day. And if you lay the groundwork for summer—and if you're not homeschooling through the summer and you're looking for a way to continue educating your children with something that's different maybe than what you've been doing doing the school year—the poetry would be perfect. You could study the poem during the week and on Friday you could have a celebration of the poet and the poem at a poetry tea time. Let the kids be involved in setting it up and decorating so it's special.

Jeannie Fulbright I think that's great. And you know what's so interesting is that—it just occurred to me; this is just a memory I just had—when I was getting my master's in creative writing— my master's is actually— the focus was fiction, but we had to take poetry and creative nonfiction courses throughout the course of the master's degree. And one professor in particular, before we started class, she always had three or four poems that she read aloud to us, and it did something. There was something different about her class because we started with that poetry. And I didn't understand at the time what was going on, but I felt like I got so much more out of her class than any other class. And I wonder if it was the act of reading that poem to us that put our brain into that creative mind frame. Because really it's a creative writing— it was a master's of fine arts in creative writing. And a lot of times we're tackling creative writing in an intellectual— you know, with our left brain. And that's just not as profitable to you as a learner to be doing that. And I why she— I'm thinking that's why she had us read poetry before every class began.

Shiela Catanzarite Yes, probably so. And it's amazing. You actually remember that class, Jeannie, out of all the classes that you took and enjoyed it. That makes sense.

Jeannie Fulbright Yeah, and I think that as parents, all we really need to do is get a hold of some delightful poems and just get in the habit. And we don't have to read a different poem every day. We could read the same poem for— do you recommend studying one poem or reciting one poem for a period of time and then moving on? Or what is your recommendation for that?

Shiela Catanzarite I do recommend that. And Charlotte Mason recommended—just as she recommended studying the masters, the artists, and the composers—the poets as well. She would say take a half a year to study one poet and several poems or take a year. And I think at the younger age, the variety is better. I would say, over the summer, choose a poet or two for the summer and choose several of the poems, but definitely spend at least one week on each poem and read it every day. Poetry is full of so much rich language. You can't really get everything out of the poem just in one one sitting. You need to take— so I would say, over the summer, choose one a week and read it everyday out loud. Read it to the child and then let the child read it if they're at the age where they can read, so that they're continuing to assimilate and digest everything that the poem is teaching.

Jeannie Fulbright I think it would be really awesome if you could print it up with a beautiful border. Print the poem up from the computer just a beautiful, lovely maybe watercolor border and put it up somewhere. Whether you have like an acrylic frame that you can put it in or put it on the wall or just somehow where it's maybe even just glue it to cardboard and stick it on a little stand, but something where you can see it, you're reminded to do it, your children can read it in their spare time. And then the visual gives them a sense of the atmosphere that the poem brings into the home.

Shiela Catanzarite Yes. And it would be fun, Jeannie, if at the poetry tea time at the end of the week, the children did their own copywork. You could print a blank border in black and white with some design elements. Let the child copy the poem and then display the copies at the poetry tea time so that they've actually written the poem and put some beauty to it. And then you're celebrating it for poetry, so you're getting a lot of the Charlotte Mason education in a less formal homeschooling day, but certainly learning so much language through that and appreciating the beauty of this language that God has given us.

Jeannie Fulbright That is such a great idea. I feel like we've given people some great ideas for how to incorporate poetry into your summer and also to make it a habit that you do, that you start every day, every academic day or anything you have them learning or doing, start it with poetry and just interacting with the poetry as Charlotte Mason recommended. But I wanted to also talk about the project that you have been working on, Shiela, called Living Verse. Can you tell us a little bit about Living Verse?

Shiela Catanzarite Sure. Yeah, Living Verse is a poetry curriculum that has been in my heart for a while that I believe God has called me to write. I actually— when my daughters left, I continued educating other people's children because I thought, well, I've been educating my own. Maybe I'll educate— just keep going with other people's children. And so I began working with a lot of private students that had language disabilities. Some weren't speaking, some had autism— so through working with these children, I began observing neural pathways for learning. And what was it that was happening in the brain when they would speak a sentence for the first time? So through that experience and through teaching my private classes— I teach speech, public speaking and writing to private school students during the week, middle school and high school. So through those experiences—post-homeschool—I began to understand the importance of language and the importance of the brain in language development. And as I worked with poetry with my students, I didn't do much poetry. But when I did, I noticed the learning was deeper. I noticed that the learning went beyond reading the words and asking a comprehension question. The learning extended to the actual language, the vocabulary, the figurative language, the metaphors, the structure. And through that, I began to see poetry is the perfect way to teach language arts in an integrated way. And so going back to that word: we are his workmanship. When you look at workmanship again, you have a craft and you have an artistry. And so with living verse, I feel like God gave me this idea that we teach the craft of poetry, the structure, how the poet decided to structure the poem, whether they structured it with a question and the rest of the poem was the answer to the question. There's so many ways, and that's what's great about poetry and writing, is that when you ask the student to write an essay, there's a formula. It's very formulaic and they have to have the three points and the intro and the conclusion. When you ask the child to write a piece of poetry, the sky's the limit. They're able to create a structure that's unique to them. Every piece of poetry is as unique as the voiceprint of the one who wrote it. That's something I've thought about a lot and how— so, we study the structure in Living Verse. How is it structured? Then we study the artistry. What did the poet include to make this poem alive? What gave this verse life? What metaphors? What poetic devices were used? What vocabulary was used? And which senses were engaged? And so the curriculum is based on this idea of workmanship, this Greek word that God gave us that is the word for poetry, craft, and artistry. So we study the craft. We study the brushstrokes. And the curriculum is a full language arts curriculum. I feel that we can teach all of language arts—grammar, punctuation, vocabulary, interpretation, inferencing. All the different aspects of language arts are folded within poetry in a unique way. Each is unique. And so my heart was to begin to pull out the language of poetry in all its beauty through the models of poems, and that we can learn language arts through studying really rich and well chosen poems. And so using the Charlotte Mason— the curriculum is a notebooking, type and the children are writing. There's copywork. They are marking the poem. Charlotte Mason was big on marking the poem for the grammatical structures and punctuation. There are seven poets that I chose, and I have two poems from each poet. So it's 28 weeks. It's a full year of poetry. Your child would read a poem— it's four days a week, so they would be reading poetry almost every single day. And creating their own journal, their own writing. And so it's unique in that it's integrating all the arts of language—we call it language arts, the different arts of language—integrating them and pulling them out of each poem to learn more about it. And then at the end, pulling those pieces back in and experiencing the beauty of it.

Jeannie Fulbright And I love— we've talked about this, and you also essentially teach the language arts through poetry. And so it's not separated. Grammar is not separated in its own subjec that's completely disconnected with language, which doesn't make sense. You don't teach— the purpose for grammar is to write well, to speak well. And for us to teach grammar as a separate subject, it's not logical. It doesn't work in with the way that children learn. It has to make sense. And to have a learning about language and language arts while studying a poem, while enjoying a poem, while memorizing a poem, reciting a poem, creating. You've also added in there visual narrations where they're drawing their own interpretation of the poem. So there's so much that you have done in this curriculum. And I'm so excited to say that I have asked you if I could publish it, and you have said that I could. So I'm really excited.

Shiela Catanzarite Yay!

Jeannie Fulbright It is going to be such a huge blessing. So tell us about the age range that this first book is going to cover.

Shiela Catanzarite So the first book is the elementary level, and I would say first grade to fifth grade. But certainly, you know, a kindergartner who might be writing or reading, it would be fine. The child doesn't have to be at any certain level. It's teaching the grammar concepts and standards through the elementary. So that's the first one that I'm working on right now. And the poems are chosen for students at that level, and it's a variety of lots of different types of poems. We have some very old English authors, some modern American authors. We have a hymnologist in there. And so lots of variety. Humorous poems, limericks, lots of different types of poems for that age group.

Jeannie Fulbright And you know what I love that you just said is that you have some modern authors in there. And I think so often just as Charlotte Mason homeschoolers, we tend to only want to interact with things that are the turn of the 20th century or the turn of the 19th century even. And we don't put the value on modern poems or modern poets because we think that we need to be teaching them the stuff of old. But God is the one who inspires us with poetry, and he is still inspiring people today. And there's a lot of beautiful poets out there and a lot of great poetry that is new. And so it's okay. Just because it's new doesn't mean that it's not Charlotte Mason. And I know I've heard you say that you think that Charlotte Mason would— that there's so many modern poets and writers that she would enjoy herself.

Shiela Catanzarite She would. And, you know, I think about the verse that says, "Laughter is good medicine," and how God— laughter and humor is such an important part of who we are and what children enjoy. And so I've included some really funny, humorous poetry in there so that the children can realize that poetry is not something stuffy and something hard, and I don't understand, and it doesn't make sense. Some poems are challenging and some people enjoy that, but poetry should be delightful. It should be fun. And so we want the children to realize, "Oh, I could put something funny in my poem, and that's okay." So we're engaging the whole child on all levels, and I think Charlotte Mason would have loved that.

Jeannie Fulbright Well, thank you so much, Shiela. I am so excited. I've gotten your first draft and it is absolutely lovely and I wish I would have had this when my children were young. There was really— I mean, as you've told me many times, that most poetry curriculum now does not— teaches it more of an academic subject and isn't teaching it in a way that just feeds the soul. It's not a feast of delight that we— and so this is what that's going to be. And I'm really excited that I'm going to have the opportunity to publish it. And I'm just so thankful that you have come on to share your heart about poetry. And I just think it'll be so fun for people to just find ways to incorporate that into their summer this summer. And we're going to have this— we hope to have it published this fall, don't we?

Shiela Catanzarite Yeah, we're working toward that. But you can start now. Everyone can start now with poetry. Yes, definitely, over the summer.

Jeannie Fulbright Absolutely. And if you want to learn more or see samples of Living Verse from Shiela Catanzarite, my lovely guest— and you're going to hear a lot more from her as she continues to develop wonderful curriculum for us to fall in love with poetry and get that education that we didn't get—just like homeschooling is all across the board—we're getting that education that we missed. And Shiela has been called on by God to provide for us in the poetry field. You can go to my website and click on Living Verse and get samples, but in the meantime, go to the library or go to Archive.org. Download some children's poetry and just dig in. Don't be intimidated. Start reading it aloud. Find funny poems and make it just a regular part of your morning. All right, Shiela, thank you so much for visiting and being with me today. And we will hopefully see you soon and hear more from you soon.

Shiela Catanzarite Thank you, Jeannie. It was a lot of fun being with you.

Jeannie Fulbright Well, thank you for joining The Charlotte Mason Show today, and I am so glad you came. And if you have any questions, be sure to go to my website, and you can contact me from there. I would love to answer any questions you have. There's a place on the Living Verse web page to contact Shiela, and we are so excited about you starting poetry as a regular part of your school day. Thanks so much. And we'll see you next time.

Jeannie Fulbright Thank you for tuning into The Charlotte Mason Show. If you want to learn more about Charlotte Mason, go to my website at JeannieFulbright.com. There you can find my blog where I discuss so many of Charlotte Mason's principles and how to implement her philosophy in your homeschool. You can also take a peek at my Charlotte Mason Heirloom Planner, which is much more than a planner. It's a Charlotte Mason mentor that not only teaches you Charlotte Mason principles, but it keeps you focused on the things that are important each week, such as habit training, nature study, scripture, read-alouds, prayer, and self-care which often gets neglected. And I would love to meet you in person at a Great Homeschool Convention where I'll be sharing a lot of different Charlotte Mason topics. To sign up go to GreatHomeschoolConventions.com. Thanks again and have a blessed and bountiful week as you fulfill your call to educate your children at home.

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