Who Owns the Sun {FIAR}

As part of our slavery mini unit, I thought I would take the little ones through two Five in a Row selections: Follow the Drinking Gourd and Who Owns the Sun?  For both we will be following the FIAR suggestions for study, but in addition to those I will be focusing our studies on one aspect of slavery.  For Who Owns the Sun? we will be studying Harriet Tubman in depth and looking at her role in helping slaves escape to freedom using the Underground Railroad, which we will be learning about during our Follow the Drinking Gourd study.

We read the following books together:

We then completed the free Who Owns the Sun? Fold ‘n’ Learn and incorporated some of the History of Black America Fold ‘n’ Learn.  (These are available free if you subscribe to the Five in a Row blog):

Harriet Tubman

We read the following two books which we already owned:

Harriet Tubman was born into slavery, married a free man and then planned her own escape into freedom leaving her family and husband behind.  She went on to help hundreds of slaves escape captivity by working the Underground Railway.  During the American civil war she served her country as a spy and nurse.  Even when she was old, Harriet Tubman continued to help those in need by setting up a nursing home for African American people to live when they had no-where else to go.

We did some activities from this Harriet Tubman unit study.  We had a fairly in depth chat about what freedom actually is.  The children gave me lots of things that they can do because they are free.  I asked what limitations are placed on them, and then asked what limitations are placed on us their parents and therefore adults.  It was an interesting look into exactly what it means to be free.

We traveled along the Underground Railway with Harriet as our guide.  This was such an amazing activity to do!  It really makes one realise just how dangerous every decision to trust was.  Trusting the white men was probably the hardest because the slave’s masters would have been white.

Charlotte helped me out with one of the activities.  The girls dressed up to look a little like a modern day news reporter and Harriet Tubman:

Charlotte helped them to brain storm some questions.  These questions she typed out for B5 (as reporter) to ask as she interviewed Harriet.  A8 had already read two biographies of Harriet Tubman and so was easily able to take on her persona and answered the questions easily:

And just one photo with Charlotte who helped them put together the whole skit:

We also studied another Slavery themed FIAR book, ‘Follow the Drinking Gourd’, which I will be posting on later in the week.

Linking up with Kris