Wednesday, January 30, 2013

The Hatmaker's Sign

 Jack's latest FIAR book was The Hatmaker's Sign, a retelling of a story Benjamin Franklin told Thomas Jefferson when others were critiquing the Declaration of Independence.

 
 We mapped the thirteen colonies and made a new sign for the hatmaker.
 
 And, of course, we made hats.

 
 I love this book!  All it is is the Declaration of Independence, but it is broken down and illustrated to make the language easier to understand.  I used this with my fifth graders every year.

 We really enjoy Jim Weiss CDs and Thomas Jefferson's America is a great go-along for this book!

 This is another good one left from my classroom days.  We read some of these biographies during our morning basket time.

 The Journey of the One and Only Declaration of Independence tells what happened to the Declaration of Independence after it was signed.  It was very interesting!

 We read the Jean Fritz biographies of John Hancock and Ben Franklin.  I love those books!

 Jack really enjoyed this one.  It's very short, but it's funny and has some good information.

 We also read this biography--Homeschool Share has a free lapbook for this one!


 On Ben Franklin's birthday we had hasty pudding.  We used the recipe from Ben Franklin, American Genius: His Life and Ideas with 21 Activities.

 Since Ben's father was a soapmaker (we read about this in the Jean Fritz bio), we tried making our own soap.  I was not feeling too adventurous, so we just got a kit from Hobby Lobby.

It was a lot of fun and they turned out great!

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