we turned the page on january and talked about our school plans for february when B noticed that the calendar failed to note Abraham Lincoln's birthday! she quickly corrected the omission!
we started the month with a
Five in a Row unit study of the book
Who Owns the Sun? what a great book. i can hardly read it without choking up. in the story a young boy asks his father a series of questions. he explains to his son how the sun and stars, wind and rain are too great and can not be owned by any man, but shine and blow and fall on all the earth. but he can not explain how a man can be owned.
"Mr. Finley may own my body, but I have a heart and I have a mind, and he can never own these. Inside of me, I'm too powerful to be owned by anyone. Inside, I am like the sun." this is such a powerful story and was, remarkably, written by a 14 year old girl. it was a beautiful introduction to our study of abraham lincoln and the civil war.
we choose mississippi as our location for the story and learned about cotton and the cotton gin. we are doing experiments with simple machines and also reading the biography of sojourner truth. have i mentioned how much i love using
Five in a Row as our curriculum? i can think of no better way to explore such a variety of topics using the very best children's books and connecting them in such a meaningful way. i am very grateful to the author, jane lambert for sharing such incredible lessons in her books.
here are some of the books we have been reading this week:
Abraham Lincoln by ingri and edgar parin d'aulaire,
Abe Lincoln: The Boy Who Loved Books by kay winters,
True Stories About Abraham Lincoln by ruth belov gross,
Lincoln: A Photobiography by russel freedman,
The Gettysburg Address by abraham lincoln, illustrated by michael mccurdy,
Lincoln's Own Yarns and Stories edited by col. a. mcclure (pictured), and
Abraham Lincoln by james daugherty (pictured).
abe's stovepipe hat
ingredients for a log cabin: small empty milk carton, pretzels,
peanut butter, graham crackers, and rolos
B presents her log cabin
everyday gift: freedom!
clara stitched a map into her quilt as a secret way to direct slaves who were running to freedom in the north. B and i made a reproduction of the quilt using cut paper.
the drinking gourd in the sky leads north to freedom!
here is our gourd, old and dried. mark helped us out by sawing the side off. B scooped out the insides and sanded it, inside and out. thank you, chris, for the gourd!
B painting our drinking gourd with a color we mixed to look like a natural gourd color. B decided against adding any other type of embellishment.
well, one thing leads to another...what do you do when you find yourself with a handful of seeds from the inside of your gourd? you plant them, of course! the seeds may be too old to sprout, but it is worth a try! i once read that ancient seeds found in a jar in the egyptian pyramids actually grew, so, who knows?
