Child's Calendar Beautiful, December

Since we seem to have a goodly number of new readers peeking in from the homeschooling blog awards to see if they wish to vote for us or not, I'll explain the Child's Calendar Beautiful for their benefit. Older readers can scroll down for the next installment.

Note for new readers- These selections are taken from the book Child's Calendar Beautiful, arranged by R. Katharine Beeson, copyright 1905, my copy published in 1908. The book is "a collection of poems and prose selections to be memorized by children,' arranged by year and month for students from year one through year eight. I picked it up at a local library book sale and, thanks to Coffee Mama's urging I am slowly working toward rendering this book into an e-text for somewhere such as Gutenberg. After all, Coffee Mama is the blogger at Our Blue Castle, and how can I refuse a Castle Dweller when I only dwell in a grubby schoolroom?

I picked up the book in late August or early September, and the book is so arranged that the year begins in September. So I've been working on it little by little, month by month, since then.

First Year, December: We've completed all the selections for the first years.

Second Year- the last December selection for the second years is:

The Wonderful Weaver

There's a wonderful weaver
High up in the air,
And he weaves a white mantle
For cold earth to wear.
With the wind for his shuttle,
The cloud for his loom,
How he weaves, how he weaves
In the light, in the gloom.

Oh, with finest of laces,
He decks bush and tree;
On the bare flinty meadows
A cover lays he.
Then a quite cap he places
On pillar and post,
And he changes the pump,
To a grim silent ghost.

But this wonderful weaver
Grows weary at last;
And the shuttle lies idle
That once flew so fast.
Then the sun peeps abroad
On the task that is done,
And he smiles: "I'll unravel
It all, just for fun."

~ George Cooper

Third Years: There was only one December poem for the third years, Little Evergreens by Evaleen Stein, posted a few days ago.

Fourth Year-Eighth years: to be posted 'tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,' to misappropriate Shakespeare.

I must share an observation that interests me. This book was compiled by a public school principal for use in public school classrooms. The vast majority of the November selections were not only religious, they came directly from the book of Psalms. Most of the December poems are not religious. A few of the selections for the older children are more introspective and refer to the birth of Christ, but most of them are either weather related (I especially like these, weather poems being a favorite of mine) or jolly red and green Santa Claus poems. However, looking ahead, I am pleasantly surprised to see how very religious several of the January selections are. I think you'll find those selections quite interesting.

Updated to address to embarassing typos/misspellings