Working with and memorizing classical poetry is something which we started with the Barracuda quite awhile ago. Finding rhyme schemes, discussing the imagery, listening to the different language were all things we have done with each poem. We felt that by exposing him to different types of writing might better help him to understand not only the world around him, but give him a different perspective to view it. He has really liked it. He will find the similies now and create some of our own. We are beginning to work with metaphor and the idea of writing styles of different authors. His favorite of all the poems we have done is

The Eagle by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls
And like a thunderbolt he falls.