March 2026 Slice of Life, No. 19
On Tuesday, St. Patrick’s Day, in the spirit of the Irish, I decided we would write limericks.
“We” refers to my daughter’s three youngest children, teenagers who school at home, and me. I teach their writing and literature classes.
I
I began class with a bit of history about limericks.
I shared two from Book of Nonsense, by Edward Lear. And we read four I wrote. (See my earlier post.)
I asked them what they noticed. They identified rhyme, number of lines, length of lines.
I pushed them to notice more, to go deeper with the elements they had noticed. That resulted in discussion about the pattern of the rhymes and the counting of syllables per line to establish line lengths and their pattern. I pushed them to move beyond the form and get involved in the content, i.e., the nonsense of the content, the feel of a story, the twist that creates humor.
Then we analyzed the five lines of a limerick in terms of narrative elements. This is what we discovered.
Line 1 has a person or place like the exposition of a narrative.
Line 2 offers an action or further description of the character or place in line 1.
Line 3 presents a problem.
Line 4 has the result or solution or climax.
Line 5 gives a twist which introduces humor.
During all of this discussion and prodding, they had no enthusiasm, only polite interest. I contemplated ending the lesson and telling St. Patrick that I’d done my best. But something in me wanted to push forward a little more. So, I did.
II
We started writing.
For our first line. I asked for a person or a place. EM immediately said, “Beach.”
That’s everyone’s favorite place.
We brainstormed and wrote: “There once was a beach,” but it had only five syllables. We wanted eight. I suggested they add some adjectives describing “beach.” The result? “There once was a lonely old beach.”
I thought the personification of the beach was perfect in nonsense writing?
I asked them to build a list of words that would rhyme with “beach.” They quickly had a list: each, peach, reach, screech, leech, bleach, breach.
I told them they would need to use one of the rhyming words at the end of the line 2, and I suggested that they start the line with “when” or “where” or “which.” I told them to think of an activity that might happen on the beach.
BN immediately suggested, “Flying a kite.”
That came out of his personal experience and love of kite flying on the beach.
It only took a brief moment, and he continued, “Where we flew a kite out of reach.” The line had the rhyme pattern and the 8 syllables.
EM quickly gave us line 3, “And nobody knows.” It had the five syllables and raised the tension. We played with it, I pointed out the past tense of “flew” and we decided to change “knows” to “knew.” Some potential rhymes were: blue, blew, you, glue, shoe, shoo, ewe.
“Ewe” was suggested by EN who had to define it for his brother.
After much discussion, lots of laughter, learning vocabulary, and making a list of rhyming words, our third line was created by EN. “Why the ewe had a shoe.” EN especially liked the internal rhyme and the use of “ewe.”
We mirrored the first line for an easy fifth line: “Down on the lonely old beach.”
There once was a lonely old beach
Where we flew a kite out of reach
And nobody knew
Why a ewe had a shoe
Down on the lonely old beach
They laughed and joked and concluded that the beach was lonely because there was a ewe with a shoe.
III
Now, they were eager to write another limerick.
This time the process went much faster and their laughter was more frequent and more boisterous. Together, we brainstormed and wrote.
Once in a very old fairy tale
An odd little duck turned quite pale
When he found a house
With a muscular mouse
Now that odd little duck has no tail.
IV
They were proud of their work.
They asked if they could copy the limericks into their writing notebooks.
What teacher doesn’t love it when students ask to do the work?
That’s how some lessons flow.
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where Alice Nine teaches language lessons that
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