Follow the Drinking Gourd

Title: Follow the Drinking Gourd
Author/Illustrator: Jeanette Winter
Copyright: 1988
Summary: A sailor named Peg Leg Joe sees a need and bravely makes a musical plan to help runaway slaves get to the safety of the north.

                  I incorporated reading Follow the Drinking Gourd with Martin Luther King Day and Black History month. The years before the civil war is the historic time setting for this book. During this time Slavery which we have previously talked about in another story we read, (Who Owns the Sun) was practiced throughout the southern states.  This story was heartfelt journey to freedom. Lily and Aj enjoyed all the activities that went along with reading this book.

Social Studies: (Underground Railroad, Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman)
We placed our Story disk on Canada because most of the "freedom" traffic traveled though Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania and ended in Canada where they could live free. We watched a movie about Harriet Tubman and the Freedom Trail that we found on-line. We also watched Martin Luther King's "I had a Dream" Speech on u-tube and did a craft tracing our hands on black and white paper. Then the kids colored pictures, read some books and watched a movie about the Underground Railroad.

Language Arts:( compound words)
Follow the Drinking Gourd provides opportunities to explore compound words. I reminded the kids that compound words are words created by combining two or more words together to form a new word. We found many compound words in this books. Some examples included: underground, trapdoor, steamship, runaways and daylight. Lily and Aj did a page from their Handwriting Without Tears workbook to learn more about these words. Currently we are reading the chapter book: Harriet Tubman: Conductor of the Underground Railroad by Ann Petry. 

Mathematics:(counting, addition)
In this book there where many opportunities for counting: from cornstalks, to trees to stars, etc. We counted our way through the book. The children also worked on there addition facts with flash cards and star counters.

Art:(wax resist watercolor technique)
There are many pictures of the sky and stars in this book. That's why we decided to paint pictures of the night sky. First the kids used white crayons to draw and trace plastic stars on their paper. Then they went over the paper with watercolor to make the background.

Science:(stars, constellations)
The sky is filled with marvelous things: the sun, the moon, clouds and the stars. People have been classifying the stars for many years so they can quickly find the same group of starts. The Drinking Gourd, or as we know it, the Big Dipper is one of these star groups. We read books and talked about the different constellations. Then the kids used tooth picks and marshmallows to copy some of the different star groups in the sky.

Thanks for reading this blog post!