black history

by

FIAR Vol. 1 – Who Owns the Sun?

This book was a little too much for my kiddos, and not for the content, but for the amount of words. I try to read our weekly book while the kids are eating breakfast. My 3 year old always speeds through her food, but even though my 5 yr old takes his time, they were both getting antsy before I finished reading. The subject matter, however, did bring a lot of discussion, as did the other books I found to enhance our week. My only complaint is that it was written by a young white girl and not in “own voice.” But, I found plenty of books to balance that so my kids could hear about this history of our country from people who had it in their own families. It is very important to me and there are so many books available out there that I have no excuse to not include them.

Social Studies

We used “The Drinking Gourd” as our first chapter read aloud, reading three chapters one night before bed and the next three the following night. My 5 year old recognizes the Big Dipper constellation already, so he was pretty interested. We skimmed through “The U.S. Civil War” book picking up highlights and details and then tied in “Before She was Harriet” to talk about life before, during, and after the war. “Show Way” was awesome! We actually saved it for our Language Arts day and it tied in with the storytelling through piece quilts that we learned while Rowing “The Rag Coat.”

Art

We skimmed through this book to see how artists will draw a picture in stages – photograph source, straight lines or circles for framing, light sketching, and then filling in more detail until complete. Lots of great pictures and things to talk about.

Science

Simple Machines are so much fun and I learned right along with the kids about some daily things we all use and what type of simple machine they are. We did a quick run-through on our favorite and least favorite things of different seasons, and our five senses. I am hoping that someday, my kids will look at the food I put on their plates and realize that each piece plays some part of building a healthy body. Until then, PBJ sandwiches it is! (actually, my kids are great with fruit, so I’m calling that a win for now)

Additional Books:

I thought I was doing a really great job at balancing stories of historic slavery and biographies of diverse people doing really awesome things and also just living lives like our family. Kids connect information in wonky ways sometimes though, and my 5 year old saw a picture of a modern Jamaican man and said, “Oh, Mommy. He has dark skin so he was enslaved.”

Yipes. So, we had to have a quick talk about how people with dark skin live and move all over the planet and that not everyone with dark skin has themselves (or in their family history) been a slave, and U.S. chattel slavery was a long time ago. I’m glad that I also borrowed these books from the library so we can see black people living their full lives, overcoming adversity of all kinds, and NOT just as enslaved people in the 1800s.

I struggled finding a poem this week for us to memorize. My kiddos are little and don’t understand a lot of poetic symbolism. They also can’t memorize something too long. I decided to stick with the sun theme for this week.

Stand with your back
to the shining sun;
watch your shadow
dance and run.

Stand and face
the shining sun;
look ahead –
your shadow’s gone!

“Shadows” by Judith Nicholls

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Complete Booklist: