nursery rhymes for old people

today we introduced our greek class to the fact that, in greek nouns of the first declension, etas turn into alphas after epsilon, iota and rho (or, rather, etas go back to the alpha found in other dialects, about which subject i'm sure dennis will have something to say). to help remember this, i came up with a little rhyme. i haven't shared it with the class yet, but i'm thinking about it. it goes like this:

epsilon, iota, rho,
etas all to alpha go.