Down Down the Mountain

The kids and I just finished spending some time in the old and endearing book Down Down the Mountain by Ellis Credle.

 

It's the story of a brother and sister living simply along the Appalachian Mountains in the early 1900's. They've never had money for shoes, so they grow some turnips in hopes of selling them in town and making enough to finally buy some shoes. As they make their journey "down down the mountain," they end up giving all but one turnip away to people they meet in need. And you'll have to read the book to find out what happens next!

As I've learned from the wonderful book workshop company LitWits (which, if you haven't already checked out, you should!), books are especially meaningful for kids when their senses are engaged. Which is what, as usual, I tried for. So here's what we did!

After reading the book for the first time, we looked into where the Appalachian Mountains are using a map (shown above) I found for free online and printed out. To learn a bit more about mountains in general, we also flipped through these mountain nomenclature cards and played around with these mountains 3-part cards which taught us the five different kinds of mountains and gave real life examples of each.

We also had several books on mountains sitting out. And the poem you see in the photo above is called General Store by Rachael Field which I printed out since the kids in the book visit an early 1900's general store.

Down Down the Mountain was also a great opportunity to visit a local farm with some friends and see firsthand how fruits and vegetables (including turnips!) are grown.

E, R, and I also talked about the difference between fruits and vegetables (anything with a seed is a fruit!). And we reviewed the food pyramid by sorting various kinds of foods into groups. We used some wooden food we had on hand for that, in addition to this sorting activity found on Twinkl. (The poem, Cauliflower Fluffy, shown below, can also be found there.)

The kids in the book ate cornbread, and although my kids had already had cornbread, I bought some at the store (baking is not my biggest gift!) for us to nosh on.

Here's what our Down Down the Mountain setup looked like:

Feel free to check out my pinterest board for lots more Down Down the Mountain ideas!