III. Post-reading

3.1. Feelings.

Discuss the emotions various young children were experiencing while listening to Mr Stoney's reading. Some of them were VERY frightened, others were EXCITED, of course, and there were some who ... Decide on the emotion and speak about it.

3.2. Poetry corner.

Read the following poem written by Mary O'Neill and define its educational message as you see it. Is the situation described in the poem VERY different from the one described in the story? Please, compare and discuss.

MISS NORMA JEAN PUGH, First Grade Teacher

Full of oatmeal

And gluggy with milk

On a morning in springtime

Soft as silk

When legs feel slow

And bumblebees buzz

And your nose tickles from

Dandelion fuzz

And you long to

Break a few

Cobwebs stuck with diamond dew

Stretched right out

In front of you —

When all you want

To do is feel

Until it's time for

Another meal,

Or sit right down

In the cool green grass

And watch the caterpillars pass...

Who cares if

Two and two

Are four or five

Or red or blue?

Who cares whether

Six or seven

Come before or after

Ten or eleven?

Who cares if

C-A-T

Spells cat or rat

Or tit or tat

Or ball or bat?

Well, I do

But I didn't use to -

Until MISS NORMA JEAN PUGH!

She's terribly old

As people go

Twenty-one-or-five-or-six

Or so

But she makes a person want to

KNOW!

MORNINGS WITH GRANDMA I. PRE-READING

I. Pre-reading

1.1. SHARE some of your sweetest and tastiest recollections of childhood. Whose cooking meant home for you then?

1.2. QUESTION the correctness of the following popular saying: "The first child is the last doll, the first grandchild is thefirst child."

1.3. DiSCUSS your views on family upbringing. What should prevail in the family, permissive attitude or restrictions?

II. READING

2.1. Understanding the title.

The title of the story written by David Jordan sounds very homely, doesn't it? What do you think it implies? Which word plays the most prominent role in the title?

2.2. Reading for pleasure and enrichment.

The following words will be useful for better understanding of the events.

Bawl — to cry loudly

Elongate — to make something longer than normal

Billow - to swell out like a sail

Maw — an animal's mouth or throat

Screech— to make an unpleasant high noise

Bellow — to shout in a deep and loud voice

Hurtle — to move or fall fast

In 1949, Chris Prescott lived with his Grandma Quinn in a big wooden house at the bottom of the Arthur Street hill in Liberty Falls, Nebraska. His mother lived in Los Angeles, where she worked as a secretary in an airplane factory. She planned to visit at Christmas. His father lived somewhere, probably, but no one ever talked about him. Chris didn't mind. He stayed busy with Grandma.

One morning a week, as soon as she had herded Uncle Wesley and Uncle Thad out of the house and off to school, Grandma turned to Chris and said, "Time for sledding!"

"Yaaay!" Chris cheered, dashing for the kitchen stairway and the second floor of the house. Grandma intended to change the sheets and pillowcases, and while she worked, five-year-old Chris was allowed to use the pillows from the beds for sliding on the slick hardwood floors.

Chris grabbed a feather pillow, held it in front of his belly with bent arms, and took a short run to build up speed. Then he dove to the floor of the long hall that connected the bedrooms and slid as far and as fast as he could. Grandma was the official judge of distance and artistic performance.

"Farthest one today!" she cried as his pillow-sled eased to a halt in the doorway of her room.

"New world record!" she shouted as he rocketed into Uncle Wesley's room and crashed into the corner of the dresser. "Are you hurt?"

"Look at that boy go!" she called as Chris j erked up on the corner of a sliding pillow and leaned to one side, making it spin in a lazy circle as it slowed to a stop.

Occasionally, Chris yielded to a reckless impulse and challenged the kitchen stairs. Hugging the pillow to his chest, he hurled himself down the uncarpeted stairway. Grandma didn't approve of stair­way-diving, so Chris never announced his intentions until he was in midair with the pillow poised before him.

"Look at me-e-e-e-e!"

"Chris! Stop! Wait! You little dickens! Are you bleeding?"

Although she disapproved, Grandma never grew angry about Chris's stair-sledding, even if he whacked his head and started bawling. She seemed to take the game as evidence of spunk. She told people Chris was a daredevil.

After the clean sheets and pillowcases were in place, Grandma wrestled the dirty bedclothes into a big bundle and carried them to the enclosed back porch where the washing machine sat. Oh, how Chris loved that washing machine!

It was a white metal cylinder on skinny legs. Mounted on one side of the cylinder were two white rubber rollers, covered partially by a metal hood. This was the wringer. Grandma put the clothes, soap, and water into the cylinder. Then, after the machine had washed and rinsed the clothes, she fed them between the two rollers and squished out most of the water. The clothes emerged from the far side of the rollers and settled into a large metal tub sitting on the floor. When the tub was full, Grandma shut off the wringer and hauled the clothes to the backyard, where she pinned them up on a sprawling set of clotheslines.

As soon as Grandma disappeared from sight, Chris went for the wringer. Its power to squeeze and elongate fascinated him. Feed a billowing wet sheet through there, and it emerged as long and skinny as a snake. A flat snake, like one that had been run over by-a bus, maybe. While Grandma was gone, Chris fished clothes out of the washer, mashed them in the wringer, caught them when they fell out the other side, and tossed them back in the water.

Sometimes, though, he grew more adventurous. He fed a leaf through the wringer. It disintegrated. He fed a piece of cinnamon toast through the wringer. It stuck to the rollers and made a gummy mess that went around and around and around. Finally, one day he stuck his fingertip in the wringer. The thing seized his finger, gobbled it up, and yanked his whole hand into its rubbery maw. Eaten alive!

He let out a screech. The mashing on his hand hurt, but more painful was his terror that the wringer was going to swallow him whole, eat him up, and maybe not even bother to spit him out like a flat snake. Chris screeched again. He howled. He bellowed.

"What's the matter? What's the matter?" cried Grandma as she reached the porch at a full gallop, clothespins scattering in all directions. "It's got me-e-e-ee!" Chris screamed.

She hurtled through the screen door, lunged to the washer, and flipped a clamp atop the wringer hood. The rollers parted. Chris's hand fell free. It was turning blue. Within a couple of hours, Chris's hand returned to normal. He had learned a lesson, however. After that day, he treated the wringer with respect. Oh, he fed an occa­sional beetle through it, but nothing serious. If he wanted to be a daredevil, he could always do some stair-sledding.

One morning a week, Grandma baked. She baked all of the family's bread, and most weeks she also made desserts — cinnamon rolls, cherry pies, chocolate cakes. All of her boys, Chris included, especially loved the rolls — crusty brown on top, chewy in the middle, sticky and sweet on the bottom from melted sugar and cinnamon. Fresh from the oven, they were as near to heaven as a five-year-old kid could hope to get.

Grandma always began her baking morning with a lot of pouring and mixing and beating and stirring, clotted glass bowls piling high in the sink for washing later. Eventually, she produced a huge wad of dough and plunked it down on a wooden carving board that slid from beneath the linoleum-topped kitchen counter. She wrestled her wad of dough around on the floury board, picking and pulling and tugging and stretching and slapping.

The flour worked its way up her forearms as she labored, until she was snowy white to the elbows. Little bits of dough stuck to her hands and wrists. Her face reddened with exertion, and beads of sweat glistened above her eyebrows. Her dark hair fell in strands across her forehead, tickling her skin. She batted at the hair with the back of one hand, leaving white streaks of flour across her forehead.

At long last, she plopped the dough into greased pans and, with lots of clattering and clanging, placed the pans in the oven. The kitchen filled with heat waves so thick you could see them and smells so lus­cious a person could almost faint from inhaling them. When the fin­ished product emerged from the oven, Grandma sniffed it, screwed up her face, and said sadly, "I wonder if it's any good this time."

"Let me see! I'll say! I'll say!"

Chris shouted, dashing to her side from his pirate's cave beneath the dining room table. "Ah, the Official Taster to the Kitchen Queen!" she exclaimed.

She cut a huge slab of steaming bread, if that was what she had, and coated it with butter and layered it with homemade strawberry preserves and handed it to Chris. "Well?" she said, hands on hips and eyebrows raised.

"Ith ghood!" Chris said, his mouth full of fresh, hot sweetness.

"Ahh," she said. "I'm glad."

Then she patted Chris on the head and turned away to set ev­erything out to cool.

If Grandma baked cinnamon rolls, Chris gobbled one dripping with butter. If she made pies, Chris munched cinnamon- and sugar-coated treats she created from crust trimmings. He ate so much he often had to skip lunch. Chris liked baking mornings the best. Or were sledding mornings his favorite? It would be tough to say. Anyway, ( Chris and Grandma stayed busy. And Christmas was coming.

2.3. True or false?

1. Chris was growing in a single-parent family.

2. Grandmother gave him all the freedom he wanted.

3. Chris loved to make all kinds of mess.

4. The boy missed his parents but never showed that.

5. Grandmother was always busy and kept Chris likewise.

6. Grandmother thought cooking at home was a waste of effort.

7. Chris was never around when the cooking was being done.

2.4. Points of view.

What did they mean by exclaiming / screaming / asking etc. that?

"Look at that boy!"

"Wait! You little dickens!"

"Chris is a real daredevil."

"It's got mee-e-e!"

"Ah, the Official Taster to the Kitchen Queen!"

"I wonder if my breads are any good today."

2.5. Verbs in focus.

Match the verbs with their definitions. Translate the sentences below using the newly defined verbs.

1	dash for	A	move your facial muscles in a spe­cial way
2	yield to	B	throw oneself flat on the ground or floor
3	screw up one's face	C	be in favour of something
4	lunge to	D	let someone have the victory
5	hurl oneself down	E	run very fast to get away from something .
6	approve of	F	make a sudden strong movement towards

1. When he heard the sound, he ... on the floor covering his head with both hands.

2. Both football teams ... the ball.

3. When the sudden downpour began, the spectators ... cover.

4. Though my parents ... my choice, I changed my mind later.

5. Don't ... the impulse to buy this thing! It's completely useless.

6. The child ... and refused to take the medicine.

2.6. Storing vocabulary.

Fill in the gaps with the appropriate words from the list below.

1. By the end of the match both contestants could hardly move from physical...

2. ... the patient slowly onto the bed.

3. The market stalls were full of ... and inviting-looking fruit.

4. He is a ... of a motorcyclist going at such enormous speed! "Catch it!" she said ... her bag to her friend.

5. Everybody ... when the firemen arrived.

6. It's dangerous ... toxic fumes.

Choose from the following: cheer, ease, daredevil, toss, exertion, luscious, inhale.

2.7. Informal English.

The story is rich in informal expressions. They are worth practic­ing. Find colloquial equivalents in the story for the following:

1. "You are a little mischievous creature!" Grandmother ex­claimed.

2. The thing pulled his whole hand into its rubbery maw.

3. She seemed to take the game as the evidence of courage.

4. Sometimes Chris would hit his head and start crying.

5. The machine seized his hand and nearly swallowed it.

6. I don't know, it would be difficult to say right now.

2.8. Gerunds in focus.

Housework can be best described with the help of gerunds. Recollect the details telling readers about Grandma's numerous occupations.

e.g. Grandma always began her baking morning with a lot of pouring and mixing and beating and stirring. As for Chris, he ...