Chapter 12- The Underground Railroad

Chapter Summary-

The spring of 1860 is passing quickly. Tom gets up early every morning and eats a good breakfast before setting out for his job on the train. After a hurried time of selling newspapers, candy and ham sandwiches, Tom arrives in Detroit at ten o'clock. The train that brings him back to port Huron doesn't leave until four-thirty in the afternoon, so Tom has a lot of spear time in Detroit. He decides to read all the books in the Detroit Library-Twelve inches of books off the shelf each week. Then he spends time watching the men at the Detroit Locomotive works. Tom is always interested in how things are made!

For Lunch, Tom finds a great hotel. There Tom meets many interesting men. The men seem to like tom too, even though he is young. They like Tom's intelligent, mature attitude and how he is always learning. During the lunch period at Finney's Tom eats his lunch and watches the people around him. He notices there are many Negros (African Americans) eating in a back room. Tom knows about the Underground Railroad from listening to conversations and reading the newspaper. He guesses that most of these people are runaway slaves and Finney's is a stop on the Underground Railroad. Tom is glad that the slaves are finding a way out. The day passes quickly and Tom invests more earnings into his laboratory- he know has 200 bottles of chemicals.

What we will cover in this chapter-
History and Geography: Canada
History and Geography: The Underground Railroad

History and Geography: Canada
Every morning at six-fifteen, Toms train blows its whistle on he Canadian side of the river. I decided that the Children should learn about our fascinating neighbor of the United States, Canada. The children learned Many interesting facts about Canada's  population, animals, agriculture and provinces. They colored a map and flag and completed copy work about facts of Canada.  They also created a poster board about all the information they learned. They learned a great deal of information from two books about Canada  and one book about North America.

History and Geography: The Underground Railroad
On page 139, Tom is thinking about the Underground Railroad and slavery. We read a book about the Underground Railroad and talked about it thoroughly.  The kids also went and explored a website called Pathways to freedom. http://pathways.thinkport.org/following/.

Thanks for Reading!