On our journey through US history this year we are visiting the colonial times. We have read many great stories to get a feel for this time. The girls are reading the Felicity American Girls Series as one of the many. For our read-aloud we picked The Sign of the Beaver.
Sign of the Beaver is a novel by Elizabeth George Speare. It was inspired by a true story and it was set in the wilderness of Maine in the 18th century. A young boy named Matt is left alone in the cabin he and his father built. His father is returning to pick up the rest of the family and this young boy has to learn to survive on his own in the wilderness on his own. He has some great adventures and gets some help along the way. We were on the edge of our seats often during this read-aloud.
There are great resources out there that we used. First, we used this Sign of the Beaver unit to follow along on our read-aloud. We found that having this resource to fill out after each chapter, really helped with comprehension and understanding what was happening in the story because the book is a little above their grade levels. We had no problem following along and all the vocabulary definitions helped too.
We also used the character Trait Organizer from Book Units Teacher to further delve into character traits, a skill that we are working on when developing our own story writing. Learning how other authors describe their characters helps us with our writing. The Book Units Teacher also has an amazing The Sign of the Beaver Unit for older students, if you have them, on her Teacher Pay Teachers account.
To end our read-aloud we had a Sign of the Beaver party and watched the movie that we found available on You Tube. It is awesome to compare and contrast the book from the movie and see what they changed and discuss why they think it is different in the movie. Some reasons could be because it would have taken too long or it was harder to film that event. Still, with the differences, the movie provided an amazing visual for what life was like during the setting of the novel.
We had some simple snacks like goldfish to represent all the fish that were caught during this story. We also had beef jerky because they used to dry meat and when Matt was lucky enough to get something other than fish, he was smoking the meat for the winter. We also made hasty pudding because it was a common quick and easy dish that was made with cornmeal back them. It is very similar to grits from the south.
To make hasty pudding we boiled 2 cups of milk on medium heat until it started to bubble. Slowly whisk in ½ cup of cornmeal and stir constantly over low heat for about 5 minutes. Be careful because it can bubble over so easily if you are not payinging attention. I suppose things cooked a little slower over the heat of a fireplace. We added a little butter and salt for breakfast, but you could also add molasses-like they did for dessert or modernize it with a little sugar and cinnamon.
