Box Car Children: Chapter 2- Night is turned into day

Chapter 2

Chapter Summary-
After the children leave the bakery, They walk until the early morning, the look for a place to sleep. Finally, they find a huge haystack and create four little "nests" around the sides. They drift far off as the sun is coming up. Around nightfall they awake and found a farmers pump for water and eat their next loaf of bread. As they are eating, they hear the baker and his wife coming along the road in there horse and buggy. They hear the bakers wife admit she does not like children. The couple decides to "look for them in Greenfield and that is all." The children walk to Silver City, knowing the couple will not find them there. As daylight Approaches, Henry and Jessie decide to sleep in the woods. They make beds out of Pine needles and shut there eyes.

What we will cover in this chapter:

History and Geography: The Dust Bowl Years
Science: Water Cycle and Drought
Language Arts: Setting, Vocabulary


Science: In this chapter, the children are very concerned with water. I took the opportunity to teach the kids about water and the water cycle. We talked about how the earths surface is covered with 70% of water and water never goes a way. There is the same amount of water on earth now as there ever was. They leaned about the water cycle and the three stages: Evaporation, Condensation and Precipitation. The kids listened to a book on tape, read a book and did a worksheet about the water cycle.

Geography- After talking about the water cycle we talked about the lack of water on land. (drought) The children learned about a tragic and scary time in American history that occurred in the 1930's. This time is history was know has the Dust Bowl. They watched a video on you-tube and read a book about the Dust Bowl. We also read poems from a book about a 14 year old girl who wrote a journal about her life during the dust bowl.  

Science- Just as the 1930's people still experience droughts worldwide. We talked about what steps we could take to help conserve water around our house. The children did an experiment to see how little changes could make such a big difference while trying to conserve water. The kids brushed their teeth while leaving  the water running. While brushing they collected the running water and measured the amount of water used. They learned that its very important to turn the water off while brushing because it saves millions of gallons of water a year!

Language Arts- The children drew a picture and wrote a sentence about the setting of the story. They also drew pictures and wrote definitions to their vocabulary words.

Field Trip to a Farm-We went on a field trip to a local farm and noticed how the haystacks are not mounds of hay anymore. They are round bales tied with wire. These types of Haystacks make it easier for farmers to stack hay among other benefits. The Box Car Children would have had a hard time making nests in this hay! Lily and Aj had a fun day picking pumpkin and taking a wagon ride.

Library Adventure- We were taking a trip to the library to pick out books and we noticed a fountain just like the one in the story. They kids enjoyed looking and taking about it. 

Thanks for reading. Stay tuned for chapter 3!