Mountain Man Unit--Actual Unit with Lesson Plans

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.

Mountain Man Unit--More Ideas

I know, I know--most mountain men explored by foot. But. There has to be a good reason to go on a trail ride buried somewhere in the expansive and inclusive study of mountain men. Maybe not. However, these horses and this trail ride allowed us to explore a mountain. There, I knew I could make it work.

Logan in autumn.

A very happy Cowboy Cowen.

Our trail guide. See, yet another connection. Many mountain men later became guides to pioneers traveling west. We let Grandpa demonstrate his guiding prowess.

Emeline didn't go on the longer trail ride, but she did get a few lessons in horsemanship.

At the Logan Zoo looking at the camera. Just prior to this, though, we were looking at bobcats.

Possibles bags! Julie sewed them up (don't judge--our kids are young) and the kids decorated them. They LOVED those bags for a long time and on many hikes.

Making beef jerky. Another great (and disgustingly messy) idea by Julie!

Mountain Man Unit--Hikes

I'm sure it comes as no surprise to anyone that I felt a key element of studying mountain men should be wandering the hills.

And wander we did.














One day we tried a trail in Bountiful, above the temple, that was beautiful.












Another day we hiked a trail closer to home--the Bonneville Shoreline trail at the Fernwood Trailhead.
















Utah has so many lovely hikes and they are all so close! Now that spring is springing, I'm itching to hit the trails again.
















There's nothing like dirt to keep a family together.

Mountain Man Unit--Art

If you are studying mountain men, I highly recommend you include Audubon somehow. We read several books about him. I blogged about our favorite of those books here.

After reading about him we looked through several birdwatching books and tried to identify the birds that frequent our backyard.




Then we tried to paint like him.








Miriam was fairly successful. The rest of us . . . had a harder time.








Along with Audubon, we also studied Albert Bierstadt. Since painting and painters became such a huge part of our unit, I set up a field trip to an art studio of a local artist. It was not hard to do as I attend church with this particular artist every week--but I bet it wouldn't be hard to find someone through a community art center or a university art department.

Rebecca graciously showed my children how her easel works, how she mixes paints (she left oil paints out with my children in the room--so brave!!) what kind of brushes she uses, and the stages a picture goes through before it is done. It was so interesting! My kids, especially artsy Miriam, were fascinated. I thought it was a lucky happenstance that Rebecca was working on a painting of a horse when we arrived because that thrilled Cowboy Cowen to his toes. This is definitely one of my favorite field trips so far.

Toward the end of the unit, as one of our culminating activities, Julie (my homeschooling buddy) and I had the children do a melted crayon art activity. The idea was that the children would draw a mountain scene on waxed paper, fill it in with shaved crayon, then iron over the crayon to melt the wax to have a finished product similar to a stained glass window.

This is a fantastic project, but we did do a few things wrong. First, crayon art should be abstract. At least, that's my feelings on the matter. It is hard to be precise with melting crayon. Second, we shaved way too many crayons leading the children to believe that they needed piles of crayon shavings. With this project, less is definitely more. I would limit crayon shavings to an amount that allows you to see lots of the wax paper through the crayon. That would be more reasonable and allow more light through your finished product.

Overall, though, it was a fun project that everyone enjoyed. Other art ideas include making a paper mache mountain scene in a box and then adding little figures to it--like Kit Carson, or a buffalo. Whatever comes to hand or makes you happy. Julie did this and her children loved it. There are numerous western artists that we didn't study but would have been an interesting addition to the unit. If you have older children you can talk briefly about the western mystique and visit an art store or gallery and see how much of the art features a western theme. So many fun things can be done with mountain men and art!

Mountain Man Unit--Fort Buenaventura Rendezvous

If you live anywhere near Ogden, Utah, and you're studying mountain men, Indians, pioneers, or just want a fun time for a very cheap price, you should head to Fort Buenaventura during one of their two annual rendezvous.

The one we attended was Labor Day of 09, and I must say, it wasn't well advertised and there wasn't a nice outline of when events were taking place. We learned that it is best to not go the last day as there really isn't as much going on as the previous days.



Despite that, we had a great time. There was canoeing.












Indian impersonating.













Dock running.













Wildlife hunting.













Natural scenic beauty enjoying.














Skunk hat trying.
















Picture posing.












Fort exploring.

And several other activities like canoe racing and cannon shooting and archery contests. We also paid $1 for each child to make a beaded necklace on a strip of leather and that was another huge (cheap) hit.

The rendezvous was only $2 per person and it was well worth it.

There's another one coming up in April. I'm pretty sure we'll be attending. I need to hunt me up another frog!

Mountain Man Unit--Favorite Books

Here are our favorite books from our Mountain Man Unit. All the books in this post are available from the Davis County Utah Library System.

Forest Cats of North America by Jerry Kobalenko (OV 599.75 K75). We used this book for the magnificent pictures. Since the book covers bobcats, lynx, and cougars, we learned how to tell each type of cat apart. Also, the information was easy for me to scan while the kids were poring over the pictures, so I was able to slip in lots of info without much effort on my part. The Hogle Zoo is home to two cougars and a Siberian lynx. The Logan Zoo (which is tiny, but cheap and you get to see the animals up close) has two bobcats. They are incredible jumpers!

Mountain Men: Cornerstones of Freedom by Andrew Santella (X 978.02 S234). I read sections of this book but not the entirety to my children as it was rather long and dry for their attention spans. However, it had the most complete information and included several really useful maps.


Jedediah Smith by Sharlene Nelson (X 92. S651n). This is a good adventure story.











Grizzly Bear by Jason Stone (X 599.784 S878). I'm sure there are numerous high quality books about grizzlies in the library system. However, this was our favorite. The pictures were great and the information was right on level for my youngsters. Learning about grizzlies was my children's favorite part of the Mountain Man Unit. Now, every picture of a bear they happen upon must be evaluated (hump, length of claws, size) to determine if it is a noble grizzly or subpar brown.




Kit Carson by Jan Gleiter (X 92. C321g). This was one of our favorite biographies.









Audubon: Painter of Birds on the Wild Frontier by Jennifer Armstrong (OV X 92. A916a). We loved this book. Audubon had all sorts of exciting adventures and he did all sorts of clever things in order to paint his birds as accurately as possible. Besides the nice pictures and good storytelling, this book opens up a world of possible activities. Fantastic!

There were several other books we loved. Unfortunately, I couldn't find pictures of the covers. Still, I don't want to leave them out.

The Wonder of Wolves by Patricia Lantier-Sampon (X 599.7444 L296). Again, there are numerous books about wolves but this one was perfect for the ages of my children. There is a wolf at the Hogle Zoo.

Albert Bierstadt: Painter of the American West by Gordon Hendricks (OV 92 B588H). This was another favorite. It is a collection of many of Bierstadt's works. I've only seen his most well-known pictures and was surprised by how much I liked some of his lesser known pieces. My children loved looking at the pictures and pulled this book out during free time constantly.