Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Similes, from December

This is something we did in December and I meant to record it here.

"We've been talking about similes at home, because we ran across some in the Hobbit (our nightly read-aloud) and I've been talking a lot about the language that Tolkien uses to create images in our heads...Hang on...actually, it's mostly metaphors but there is one simile in there. The dragon, Smaug, describes himself to Bilbo:
"My armour is like ten-fold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, and the shock of my tail a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane and my breath death!"

That was too good to pass up! I love that passage! It's way more interesting than saying, "My armour is really tough, my teeth are sharp and so are my claws...."

I thought similes would be easier to explain than metaphors so that's what I did. B needed to let it sink it a little, but T got it right away. I think T is going to be my liberal arts buddy. Anyway, T has been making lots of similes and announcing them to me. It's so cute. Some of the similes he's made are:
"This lantern is like the sun."
"Mashed potatoes are like clouds."
(I told him that you often have to tell a reader WHY they are like those things).
"Mama's hair is as fluffy as cotton-balls."
And this is my FAVORITE one:
"Your belly is as squishy as a jumping-house."

Anyway, similes are fun. And they're easy to do with kids; it's easy for kids to make them, I mean. Look at some of the things we read that had similes in them:
"Mary had a little lamb, *It's fleece was white as snow.*"

"Twinkle twinkle little star....*like a diamond in the sky*."

And from "Twas the night before Christmas":
"His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!""

This is an excerpt from a post I wrote somewhere. We did finish reading the Hobbit and based on the kids' questions and MY questions to them, I feel confident that they understood what we read.

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