Snow White Birthday party and The Underground Railroad
As mentioned previously, Anastasia turned four years old last month. She wanted her Snow White figurine on her birthday cake. Since I am a theme party sort-of person, I made this a Snow White party. There aren't party kits for Snow White, so I pulled ideas from a couple of different places to put the whole party together. I share the ideas here, hoping someone else can benefit from my research. Our party stretched over a couple of days, beginning on her birthday and ending after the grandparents came to celebrate with her. On her birthday morning, we woke her wearing dwarf hat/beards that I made out of felt. She enjoyed waking up to dwarves singing the birthday song. Then later that day, the kids had a treasure hunt. I hid gold wrapped candy and ring pops in the living room, and they pretended to be mining for treasure. The kids really enjoyed this game. I had a mirror craft ready at hand, but we never got to decorate mirrors, there were too many other things going on. The kids loved the felt dwarf hats and decorations around the house. Ana's name was put into an apple Birthday banner. I had a basket of apples sitting out, and a basket of flowers arranged for a center piece. I used red, yellow and royal blue as the theme colors for the party décor, (balloons, streamers, plates, cups, napkins). And the food consisted of hamburgers, hotdogs and a woodland themed salad, wishing well water, Jell-O gems and vegan poison apple cake with ice cream. For favors, we made Oreo cookie wishing wells. Ana enjoyed being the center of the attention, and we are all excited for her fourth year of life!
Last week our Five In A Row book was, Follow The Drinking Gourd, by Jeanette Winter. This story of the underground railroad captivated us. The illustrations are simple yet full of information not found in the text. The story is a perfect introduction to slavery and the Civil War in America for young readers.
I'm not sure the children understand what slavery really means, though it was one of our vocabulary words. Tristan kept saying, "I'm glad I wasn't born during the time of slavery!" I tried to explain to him that, though that was a troubled time in our nation's history, there are still forms of slavery today and we should always fight for justice and freedom.
Our vocabulary words this week: Slave, Freedom, Runaway, Quaker. We looked for compound words in the text: underground and railroad are two obvious ones. And we compared Follow the Drinking Gourd to two other stories (listed below).
For Math we counted things in the story. Anastasia pointed out that the last illustration shows five people and five moonflowers! I love getting the children to dig into a book, and then hearing what they observe. I am often amazed by their insights. We reviewed measurements of time and worked on some time word problems. (If the runaways reached the Ohio river in 3 days, how many hours were they on the trail? etc.)
For Social Studies/ Geography we located the slave states, and the northern "free" states and outlined the border into Canada above the Great Lakes. We traced possible routes taken by the runaway's in our story to get to Lake Erie and Canada. We discussed how learning happens easier when things are put to song. It was against the law for a slave to learn to read or write, so much knowledge was passed down through song. We read the Emancipation proclamation and learned about Abraham Lincoln. We read the biography of Eli Whitney and learned about the invention of the Cotton Gin.
For Science we learned about birds of North America, and listened to a tape of bird calls and we read about the BobWhite/Quail. We learned about the cotton plant and cotton fabric and reviewed constellations (especially the Big Dipper) and Polaris, the north star.
For art, we tried to make collage pictures using patterned paper inspired by Jeanette Winter. We noted the balance she used in her artwork and compared Winter's illustrations with the work of Paul Gaugin and Thomas Hart Benton. We also made a fun finger paint rainbow craft with cotton ball clouds.
Additional books we enjoyed this week:
Eli Whitney, Judith Alter
Birdsongs, Betsy Franco
Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad, Faith Ringgold (strange and eerie illustrations, yet artistically written and moving)
Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt, Deborah Hopkinson (try reading this one through without crying! We compared this one to Follow the Drinking Gourd)
From Cotton To Pants, Ali Mitgutsch
The Drinking Gourd, F.N. Monjo (We listened to a read along version of this story and I recommend this. The Drinking Gourd song is sung at the beginning of the story and the sound effects added so much to the telling. We also compared this story to Follow the Drinking Gourd)
Last week our Five In A Row book was, Follow The Drinking Gourd, by Jeanette Winter. This story of the underground railroad captivated us. The illustrations are simple yet full of information not found in the text. The story is a perfect introduction to slavery and the Civil War in America for young readers.
I'm not sure the children understand what slavery really means, though it was one of our vocabulary words. Tristan kept saying, "I'm glad I wasn't born during the time of slavery!" I tried to explain to him that, though that was a troubled time in our nation's history, there are still forms of slavery today and we should always fight for justice and freedom.
Our vocabulary words this week: Slave, Freedom, Runaway, Quaker. We looked for compound words in the text: underground and railroad are two obvious ones. And we compared Follow the Drinking Gourd to two other stories (listed below).
For Math we counted things in the story. Anastasia pointed out that the last illustration shows five people and five moonflowers! I love getting the children to dig into a book, and then hearing what they observe. I am often amazed by their insights. We reviewed measurements of time and worked on some time word problems. (If the runaways reached the Ohio river in 3 days, how many hours were they on the trail? etc.)
For Social Studies/ Geography we located the slave states, and the northern "free" states and outlined the border into Canada above the Great Lakes. We traced possible routes taken by the runaway's in our story to get to Lake Erie and Canada. We discussed how learning happens easier when things are put to song. It was against the law for a slave to learn to read or write, so much knowledge was passed down through song. We read the Emancipation proclamation and learned about Abraham Lincoln. We read the biography of Eli Whitney and learned about the invention of the Cotton Gin.
For Science we learned about birds of North America, and listened to a tape of bird calls and we read about the BobWhite/Quail. We learned about the cotton plant and cotton fabric and reviewed constellations (especially the Big Dipper) and Polaris, the north star.
For art, we tried to make collage pictures using patterned paper inspired by Jeanette Winter. We noted the balance she used in her artwork and compared Winter's illustrations with the work of Paul Gaugin and Thomas Hart Benton. We also made a fun finger paint rainbow craft with cotton ball clouds.
Additional books we enjoyed this week:
Eli Whitney, Judith Alter
Birdsongs, Betsy Franco
Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad, Faith Ringgold (strange and eerie illustrations, yet artistically written and moving)
Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt, Deborah Hopkinson (try reading this one through without crying! We compared this one to Follow the Drinking Gourd)
From Cotton To Pants, Ali Mitgutsch
The Drinking Gourd, F.N. Monjo (We listened to a read along version of this story and I recommend this. The Drinking Gourd song is sung at the beginning of the story and the sound effects added so much to the telling. We also compared this story to Follow the Drinking Gourd)
Comments