More Slavery Unit Ideas

Here are a few more ideas for a slavery unit.

1) I had the kids draw a picture of our house and show where they would hide a slave from a slave catcher. The kids loved doing this, but the end result was a little peculiar. Miriam drew a great picture of a barn with a hayloft and a slave's head in the hayloft. Um, we don't have a barn. Still, good idea. Cowen was really clever. He drew a still upright dead tree with no slave in sight. The slave was inside the dead tree because according to Cowen, if you hollowed out a dead tree and put a slave in it, nobody would ever find the slave. You may have already guessed this, but no, we do not have a dead tree on our property. Still, good times and a general understanding had by all.

2) Sing a bunch of gospel songs. In fact, play gospel music every day for a few weeks. I played my Johnny Cash gospel cd. I know, he's not black so it doesn't sound quite the same, but my children did get to hear 20 great gospel songs. We also watched a lot of gospel choirs and gospel singers on youtube. I prepped my kids by reading the book Hush Harbor and together we learned "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."

3) We read several books about slaves making map quilts to help them escape. Then Julie copied one of the quilt patterns using paper and cut the paper into small pieces. Then we let the kids glue the patterns back together. After that, Julie assembled the whole "quilt." That was one of the better slavery unit days because Julie was in charge and she is crafty so the quilt turned out perfect. Everything aligned. Amazing.

Here are some great ideas that I didn't do.

1) Make a freedom booklet as your culminating activity.

Page One: Choose a slave identity and explain it--including where you live in the South.

Page Two: Make a map showing the route to Canada from where you are in the South.

Page Three: Draw a picture of fear.

Page Four: Write a poem about being free.

Page Five: Write a short paragraph about a person we've studied (ex. Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abraham Lincoln, etc.) and how you feel about that person.

Page Six: Write out a morse code message.

Page Seven: Include your quilt square.

Page Eight: Write a short mission statement about how you will treat all of God's children.

So many great idea . . . so many hormones.

Underground Railroad Activity

I'm going to admit something. I never planned out my slavery unit like I normally do--with each activity corresponding to one or more books and each activity carefully thought-out and prepared in advance. Nope. Right before the slavery unit I switched birth control and had a hormonal melt-down and was pleased with myself if the children were alive at the end of the day and something resembling school took place. Some days, I settled for the children being alive at the end of the day.

This unit won't ever have a nice outlined day-by-day plan. However, I am going to list a few more of my favorite ideas that we did (or didn't) do.

One of those ideas involved asking my homeschooling neighbor if she would allow her home to be a station on the underground railroad. She agreed. Yeah! Julie and I prepped the kids by reading numerous underground railroad books, and focusing heavily on Harriet Tubman over the course of several days. Then, for our weekly combined activity, we told the kids that Julie and I were slave catchers, Miriam was a conductor, and the rest of them were escaping slaves. Miriam was responsible for getting everyone to the next station on the underground railroad.

It was awesome. Even though we told Miriam she was responsible for getting everyone, including Emeline (age 3), to the station safely, Emeline was forgotten in the first 30 seconds and had to make her way across the street by herself. Good thing I checked the road before I allowed them out the door.

The shrieking, running, yelling that took place on the way to the station probably wouldn't have been a good idea back in slave days, but it made it easier for me and Julie to keep tabs on the kids' progress. When we knew they'd reached the station, we followed at a much more leisurely, and quieter, pace.

The whole thing went very well, except that I forgot to prep Miriam about the fact that Julie and I would eventually find her. When we did, Miriam was outraged and yelled about never returning to slavery and why did we find her and then ran outside and down to the street to hide at another neighbor's home. Grr.

Eventually I tracked her down and explained that she couldn't really escape me because I was her mother. The light went on, she calmed down, and the rest of the day was peaceful.

So . . . great idea. Next time, I'll have the snags worked out ahead of time.

Good books about slavery

There were more books about slavery at the library than any other subject I have ever taught my children. It was overwhelming. I brought home about 40 children's books on the subject (no joke) and read through them all. I did not read all of them to my children, but I did read most of them. These are my children's favorites.

If You Traveled on the Underground Railroad by Ellen Levine. This is a nonfiction summary of the underground railroad. It is just the right length and just the right amount of text per picture.



Henry's Freedom Box by Kadir Nelson. Gold Star. (That means it was one of our very favorites.) This is based on the true story of a slave who mails himself to freedom. Awesome.





Hush Harbor by Freddi Williams Evans. About a group of slaves who are forbidden to meet together to worship but do so anyway. It was the perfect introduction to a discussion on what masters tried to control and why, and how slaves circumvented the rules. It also led naturally into us learning several slave songs, including "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."


Liberty Street by Candice Ransom. Discussed the importance of reading and why slaves took great risks to learn how.




Show Way by Jacqueline Woodson. The author of this book has slave heritage and the book traces back her history to slave times. It is very interesting/poetic. My kids loved it.





Up the Learning Tree by Marcia Vaughan. The book is about a young slave boy who takes great risks to learn how to read.






A Good Night for Freedom by Barbara Olenyik Morrow. Gold Star. This is definitely one of the best books out there. It is about a young girl who sees two escaped slaves hiding at Levi Coffin's house. When the slave catchers come, she has to decide whether to help the slaves or obey her father and avoid trouble. The kids and I had the best discussion after reading this book about courage and morality. I highly recommend this book.

The Patchwork Path: A Quilt Map to Freedom by Bettye Stroude. One of the better "quilt" books.






Under the Quilt of Night by Deborah Hopkinson. Another good "quilt" book.






Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt by Deborah Hopkinson. Gold Star. Another one of our absolute favorites. This is far and away the best of the quilt books. Clara slowly gathers the information she needs to put together a map quilt to help her escape to freedom. The theme is the same as the other quilt books, but something about it makes it worlds better than the rest. Apparently other people like this one too because it was a Reading Rainbow book. (Take a moment to enjoy that nostalgic rush.)

A Picture Book of Harriet Tubman by David A. Adler. Although there are many Harriet Tubman books out there that have won awards and look all spiffy--this is the best of the lot. I liked it because it was so straightforward. A nice, interesting biography. A lot of the other Tubman books had some gimmick, like flying children (I'm not making it up--you can find the book at the library, but I don't recommend it), or overdone prose that really detracted from Tubman's story. Maybe I'm just picky. Harriet Tubman is one of my history heroes. I'm planning on naming my next girl Harriet after Harriet Tubman. She was an incredible person: unselfish, persistant, brave, independent. You don't need to "dress up" her story to add impact. My children agreed with me--they liked this one best too.

Importance of Knowing How to Read

This post is about my very favorite activity of the whole slavery unit. Mostly because it was designed to help my children appreciate the power that comes with knowing how to read. My homeschooling buddy Julie and I put together this activity and it worked out great. I was very pleased.

First, I did a lot of frontloading. I started by reading the two books pictured below.

Up the Learning Tree by Marcia Vaughan is about a slave boy who is required to walk his young white master to school and back every day. The slave boy realizes that if he is up the nearby tree, hidden in the leaves, he can hear the teacher and see what she writes on the board. He then practices his letters by carving them into the tree.

The risk, of course, is great if he gets caught (which he eventually does). My children were captivated by the story and it provided a perfect gateway to talking about why he would risk so much just to learn to read.

Liberty Street by Candice Ransom is another book about a young slave risking a great deal to learn to read. In this story, a free black woman forms an underground school for slaves in her town. All the children who attend this school take an incredible risk to learn. My favorite part of this book is that it showcases the power reading gives to people, but also that slaves used a variety of methods to take power. The mother of the young slave who is learning to read uses her washing to signal runaways that a boat is ready to take them across the river to safety. The kids and I talked about how learning to read helped the slave girl broaden her options and understanding and ability to escape, while her mother's bravery (despite not knowing how to read) helped numerous other slaves.

After reading those two books, we talked about Frederick Douglass and how learning how to read affected his ability to remain a slave. My son was excited about that because he played Frederick Douglass in one of our mini-plays and his big line was, "I can read, I can think, I will be free!"

Reading the books and discussing them were helpful but I really wanted to drive the point home that reading=power. Julie and I decided to meet at her house for a scavenger hunt with prizes (books, of course) for the kids who could reach the end of the hunt. Julie wrote the clues, however, in morse code. We picked morse code because my daughter already knows how to read so English was out. Also, picking a different language would make it really hard for the kids to unscramble the message. With an older child, a different language would work well, but not with our youngsters.

Julie wrote the clue on a big bulletin board and then wrote a smaller morse code explanation sheet. We told the kids that there was a great prize for them if they could find it and then we told them the first clue was on the table. The kids ran off, excitedly, only to weep and wail minutes later when they saw the morse code. We took a few minutes to talk to them about how the slaves must have felt, seeing a map but not being able to decipher it. Then we pointed out how they might decode the message and they took it from there.

They were very, very proud when they got the message all decoded and found the prize. Overall, the activity was a good one for really driving home the point about reading giving you access to information (power).

Slavery books for independent readers

Miriam is an avid reader. That is wonderful and challenging at the same time. When you have a six year old reading several years above age level, finding books becomes a challenge. That is where historical fiction becomes so valuable. History is fascinating (stop grimacing) and the best stories are often the true stories. While I had a hard time finding books on certain historical topics (mountain men, for example) there is a bounty of historical fiction books on slavery and the Civil War.

A small caveat: I have not read these books. I cannot keep up with what Miriam is reading. However, at the end of the slavery/Civil War unit, I asked Miriam to show me her favorites and these are the ones she picked.

Lincoln and His Boys by Rosemary Wells



Escape North!: The Story of Harriet Tubman by Monica Kulling






The Brother's War: My Side of the Story (Melody and Marshall) by Patricia Hermes. This is two books in one, which is a very clever idea. My daughter was thrilled that she could turn the book over and read a completely different story about the same story. She showed it to everyone who walked through our door.



The Drinking Gourd by F. N. Monjo










President of the Underground Railroad: A Story About Levi Coffin by Gwenyth Swain













North Star to Freedom: The Story of the Underground Railroad by Gena K. Gorrell

All of these titles are available from the Davis County, UT library system.