This week we've been reading the chapter in A Kid's Guide to African American History on life on a plantation. The girls haven't wanted to do any crafts or eat grits and collard greens, but we have read through everything and had lots of good discussion.
Here are the books we used:
And the girls' personal favorite Uncle Remus: The Complete Tales (of Brer Rabbit)
We're also going to listen to some songs such as Blue-Tail Fly (you can listen to an easy-to-understand version here and read the words in heavy dialect and not-so heavy),
Pick a Bale of Cotton (YouTube video of Leadbelly singing --skip the comments discussion)
and Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. (this is a beautiful acapella version which downloaded automatically into my iTunes. There is a link here to the Wikipedia article on this song also.)
Next week we'll investigate the abolitionists, Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad.
2 comments:
Hey Sandwich!
Where do you come up with your books? Do you buy them all new? How do you decide what to study?
I love what you're doing with your kids. It seems like so much fun. You're my homeschool hero. :-)
Big answer, we use Sonlight. We are loosely working through Core 3, although this Black History unit is a side track.
I buy a lot of my books at Half Price Books and another local 1/2 price bookstore. I find most of them just browsing.
I find a lot of recommendations surfing homeschool forums (mainly The Well-Trained Mind and Sonlight)
I also check out roughly 100 books per topic from my library system (interlibrary loan). About 10% I put right back into the return bin before I leave the library, once I see them. The rest go home and probably 25% I give to the kids to read through on their own. Another 10 or 20% I read to them. The rest are returned unused.
I also use the library to preview things before I decide to buy them.
Life on a Plantation we bought at a plantation giftshop somewhere down south on vacation once. School books make cool souveniers.
Blessings,
Sandwich
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