My Side of the Mountain

What a great way to kick off the school year!  Our classroom is filled with eager readers who LOVE adventure stories as much as I do.
Our first book, My Side of the Mountain, has many interesting topics for us to discuss. Last week, we learned a bit about the author, Jean Craighead George.  Did you know that her dad was a naturalist and taught her all about foraging for edible plants?  And her two brothers were the first falconers in the country.  They taught her how to train her own falcon!

We looked at a map of the east coast, and located the Catskill Mountains, we used clues to determine that this story likely took place in the 1950's, then we tried our hand at drawing nature journal sketches on the under side of a piece of tree bark.

This week, our hands-on project was about riverside clay, and how patient you need to be to be able to mold it into a preserves jar.  While our hands were busy molding our jars and lids, we enjoyed viewing video clips of weasels, falconers, and listened to hoot owls and whipporwils.

We look forward to wrapping up our discussion of this book with our taste buds.  Teacher Nalani has found a fresh opossum carcass just perfect for brewing a possum stew for us to try.  ;)

On October 12, the discussion begins on our next book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
(due to a miscalculation, Stuart Little had to be deleted from our calendar - sorry)