The Wild Horses of Sweetbriar

Nothing captivates the imagination, and excites our free spirit quite like horses. The Wild Horses of Sweetbriar relates a little girl's experience with wild horses on an imaginary island off the coast of New England. This winter story reveals the harshness of survival in the wild, but it also talks about the strength of life. This book introduced us to many different plants and animals that are indigenous to the North East beaches (We defined the words Flora and Fauna).The horses in the story remind us of the ponies that live on Assateague island off the coast of VA. We read about these horses. We also read Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey discussing how food is preserved and (used to be) stored for winter. We talked about units of liquid measure, cups, pints, quarts, gallons. We  learned about feelings, making a feeling mini book and we learned how to count by tens up to 100. There were ten horses that lived on Sweetbriar island and Ted Rand's illustrations show the horses in groups of ten most of the time. The illustrations of the horses running through the sea use the effect of spattered paint and we practiced this using watered down paint and old toothbrushes. Also a fun shape activity making shapes with marshmallows and pretzels.