Mountain Man Unit
Day One: Find a book or website that talks about the uses of possibles bags. Glance through it with children then make/decorate a possibles bag. Make beef jerky, or get it started, so you can keep jerky in your possibles bags on all future hikes.
Day Two: go on a hike!
Day Three: Read part of Mountain Man: Cornerstones of Freedom and Audubon: Painter of Birds. Draw something in nature that you brought back from your hike, or that you remember, or something Audubon painted, or go outside and paint at a park.
Day Four: Read Mountain Men: True Grit and Tall Tales then write and illustrate your own tall tale. (Since my children are small, they told me what they wanted me to write down, and then they did their own illustrations.)
Day Five: Read books about grizzly bears, wolves, big cats found in the west, and wolverines. Have the kids decide which animal would be the most dangerous to mountain men and why. Make a list. (This activity ended up being stretched out over several days as my children wanted to spend a lot of time on each animal. I couldn't find any books at the library about wolverines so we just researched it online. Studying the animals ended up being my children's favorite part of the whole unit, which surprised me.)
Day Six: go on a hike!
Day Seven: Read Kit Carson book. Make a list of his good qualities. Make a book about how we can demonstrate good qualities (similar to the Who's Your Hero? books by David Bowman). One page would have something like "Kit was courageous when he . . . , Miriam can be courageous by saying, 'NO!' when someone asks her to smoke a cigarette."
Day Eight: Read about Jedediah Smith. Show kids a map of where Smith traveled. Let them draw the lines of where Smith traveled on their own map. (Just a tip--children love maps. I didn't know this until I started homeschooling.)
Day Nine: Look through The Art of the Old West and Albert Bierstadt and paint a picture in your art book that has to do with nature, or try to copy one of Bierstadt's paintings.
Day Ten: Go on a hike!
On other days we also went to the Hogle Zoo and the Logan Zoo. The Bean Museum in Provo would be another good field trip option. I didn't think about it, but watching the Disney movie about Davy Crockett would have been fun too.
Day Two: go on a hike!
Day Three: Read part of Mountain Man: Cornerstones of Freedom and Audubon: Painter of Birds. Draw something in nature that you brought back from your hike, or that you remember, or something Audubon painted, or go outside and paint at a park.
Day Four: Read Mountain Men: True Grit and Tall Tales then write and illustrate your own tall tale. (Since my children are small, they told me what they wanted me to write down, and then they did their own illustrations.)
Day Five: Read books about grizzly bears, wolves, big cats found in the west, and wolverines. Have the kids decide which animal would be the most dangerous to mountain men and why. Make a list. (This activity ended up being stretched out over several days as my children wanted to spend a lot of time on each animal. I couldn't find any books at the library about wolverines so we just researched it online. Studying the animals ended up being my children's favorite part of the whole unit, which surprised me.)
Day Six: go on a hike!
Day Seven: Read Kit Carson book. Make a list of his good qualities. Make a book about how we can demonstrate good qualities (similar to the Who's Your Hero? books by David Bowman). One page would have something like "Kit was courageous when he . . . , Miriam can be courageous by saying, 'NO!' when someone asks her to smoke a cigarette."
Day Eight: Read about Jedediah Smith. Show kids a map of where Smith traveled. Let them draw the lines of where Smith traveled on their own map. (Just a tip--children love maps. I didn't know this until I started homeschooling.)
Day Nine: Look through The Art of the Old West and Albert Bierstadt and paint a picture in your art book that has to do with nature, or try to copy one of Bierstadt's paintings.
Day Ten: Go on a hike!
On other days we also went to the Hogle Zoo and the Logan Zoo. The Bean Museum in Provo would be another good field trip option. I didn't think about it, but watching the Disney movie about Davy Crockett would have been fun too.
I have a quick question: How did you decide what subject to start with (i.e. teach about insects first or mountain men first)? Was it random? Or did you kind of have subjects laid out in a particular order? I'm wondering because I have found so many great unit studies, I'm having a hard time deciding which subject I want to do first next fall! :) :)
ReplyDeleteThanks again!
~Lynette