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Curriculum Tie-Ins Extras:

Iron Horses

How to Play Race to Finish the Tracks:

Materials: Copy a game board from Verla Kay’s Picture Book Curriculum Tie-Ins for each pair, or group of students, or use the game board sheet as a model to create a larger board. Students will also need a die, markers, and the game cards provided in the Curriculum Tie-Ins packet, or, they can make up their own.

Play: Students take turns rolling the die. They move forward as many spaces as the die indicates. If they land on a “card” space – those marked by a circle around the dot - they draw a card and do what it says. If they land on a regular space, they stay there until their next turn. One player “builds” from the west, another from the east. The student who reaches Promontory Summit, Utah, first, wins. NOTE: there are fewer spaces for the Western player to travel, but the cards are more “dangerous”.

EXTENTION: ALL GRADES :

Old Style Art: Students learn how illustrations work with text. Discuss how art in various books fits the text -show examples. Talk about how the artwork in IRON HORSES fits its subject. How does it make the students feel? Why do they think the artist chose this style? 3-6 McCurdy’s art is done with scratch board. You can purchase pre-made scratch board, or let the students make their own:

Materials: Paper and crayons, something to scratch with -- a pen nib or tooth pick.

Procedure: Students think about the colors they want to show in their finished picture. They color blocks of those colors on their paper. They should color hard and fill in all the spaces where they want to see color. Next they COVER the paper with black crayon. This will take some time and the coverage should be thorough. When the paper is black, students scratch their drawings through the black crayon, revealing the colors they laid down underneath. You might present techniques of making parallel lines, points (pointillism), negative images etc.

Track Lengths and Regions: According to the Golden Spike National Historic Site website, the tracks ran 700 miles east from Sacramento to Promentory Summit, Utah and about 1070 miles west from Council Bluffs, Nebraska to Utah. These lengths are approximate: Starting from the west, the Central Pacific built about 35 miles of track in the California Central Valley. 90 miles of track climbed the Sierra Nevada, and 570 miles crossed the Great Basin desert to Promontory Point, Utah. Starting from the east, Union Pacific tracks crossed about 500 miles of Plains, and about 160 miles of plateau and foothills to the Rockies. 300 miles of tracks crossed the Rocky Mountains, and about 110 miles were in the desert from Salt Lake City, Utah to Promontory Point.

Visit these websites for additional lessons and information: American Experience, The Transcontinental Railroad http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/tcrr/index.html Be sure to view “Race to Utah”, “Scouting the Route”, “Native Americans”, and Teacher’s materials. The Golden Spike National Historic Site has an excellent site, but it is a little hard to navigate. Go to http://www.nps.gov/gosp/home.html click In Depth and maximize. This section of the site has teacher’s packet with scripts for reenacting the Golden Spike Ceremony, pages to color, and diagrams of locomotives etc. There is also oral history and a wealth of information in the Student Index including what railroad workers wore and ate!

Covered Wagons, Bumpy Trails

Extension: 3-6 Comparing weight and volume :

Materials: Paper bags and boxes, empty, clean food containers, a 4 foot by 10 foot space.

Procedure: Divide students into two groups, or do as a project with another class. One group should research food available at the time of the transcontinental railroad and decide what they would pack to bring on a five day trip. Remember trains sometimes stopped for the passengers to eat at towns along the way. This group should gather containers to represent the foods they would pack for a family of four – ie a coffee can for a pound of coffee, boxes the approximate size of crackers or dried fruit etc. The containers don’t have to be real – they can be decorated to represent the items.

The second group will gather containers to represent food suggested for a family of four on the 6 month journey along the emigrant trail. In some cases, such as salt, and baking soda, students can gather empty, real containers. (You can stuff empty flour and sugar bags with newspaper.)This group will need to plan carefully to pack the containers into an area the size of a wagon – about 4 feet by 10 feet

Students can use the information below to calculate the food they will need for the Oregon Trail. This much food is suggested for each adult traveling the Oregon Trail:

200 pounds flour 75-150 pounds of bacon
5-10 pounds of coffee 2 pounds of tea
20-25 pounds of sugar _ bushel corn meal (about 4 gallons or 18 liters)
15 pounds dried corn _ bushel dried beans
10 pounds rice 1 bushel (about 8-9 gallons or 35 liters) of dried fruit
10 pounds salt 2 pounds saleratus (like baking soda)
small keg of vinegar 30 pounds of hardtack

Have each group set up a classroom display of the goods they would bring on their trip. Discuss why someone would choose to ride the train rather than a covered wagon. Why did more people make the trip after the railroad was completed? Why wouldn’t people take the railroad? Would your students choose to make this trip? How? Why, why not? Why did some Indian nations tear up the railroad tracks? After a wagon was packed for four people, what else would fit? What would students want to bring of their own? When the wagon load needed to be lightened, what would they discard?

Visit these websites: For information on the transcontinental crossing see the diary of Charles Austin at Golden Spike National Historic Site website http://www.nps.gov/gosp/research/austin.html For a guidebook to traveling the Oregon Trail see The Emigrants Guide to Oregon and California, by Langford Hastings, published by George Conclin, Cincinnati, 1845. This material is online at http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/IGUIDE/oregon-t.htm

Homespun Sarah

Extensions: Science:

Materials: Raw wool, magnifying glasses or microscope.

Procedure: Have students look at small, teased piece of raw wool with a magnifying glass, or under a microscope. Wool fibers have little hooks on the sides. How do students think this helps in spinning fibers together?

Students finger-spin wool:

Procedure: Each student needs about a half a handful of raw, cleaned wool. Students gently pull the wool fibers apart, and comb them with their fingers so all the fibers run about the same direction. They hold one end of the wool fibers while twisting the other end in one direction. Students can pull on the wool gently as they twist. They should be able to “spin” about 3- 5 inches of wool thread.

Contact the county extension and ask for names of local spinner or weavers’ groups. Most are happy to send someone to demonstrate carding, spinning, and or weaving to your students.

Related activity – try paper weaving.

Gold Fever

Extension: Science:

Gold is many times heavier than water and heavier than many other rocks and sand. Miners separated the heavy gold in California’s streams using gold pans. Later they made more and more elaborate contraptions for getting the gold. Your students can easily see how gold panning worked:

Materials: transparent glass or plastic jars, lids, mixed sand gravel and rocks (you can make this in advance), water.

Procedure: fill jars with water. Add two or three handfuls of the sand/grave/rock mix. Shake the jars. Let the material settle overnight. Students can look through the side of the jars to see how the material settled. They can draw the different sediment layers.

Demonstrate: Materials: Cookie sheet, dishpan, large metal pie pan, about 2 feet of 4-6 inch corrugated drain pipe (without perforation if possible), a long board or length of heavy cardboard.

Procedure: Shake the contents of one of the jars. This simulates turbulent flood waters. Pour the mix down a cookie sheet that is raised about 3 inches on one end (Put the lower end over a dishpan!) Where does the sand end up? The gravel? The rocks?

Now use a flat metal pie pan for a gold pan. Follow the directions from http://www.infowest.com/life/goldpan.htm to try gold panning technique. (You probably won’t find any gold.)

Simulate a sluice box by cutting a plastic drainpipe in half lengthwise. Support it on a board or heavy cardboard. Tilt it slightly – do this outside or over a dishpan. Shake the contents of a jar and pour the water/sand/grave/rock mixture onto the top of the drain pipe, letting the water run to the bottom. Where do the rocks end up? The gravel? Where would the heavy gold be?

See http://collections.gc.ca/cariboo/mining/placer.htm#s for a description of gold panning, sluice boxes, and rocker boxes.

Visit the Oakland Museum Site for extensive information on the Gold Rush. Go to http://www.museumca.org/goldrush/getin-curr.html and click on the icons to the left. To enter the text and photo/art portion of the units, click on the book that appears!

Also visit the PBS Gold Rush site http://www.pbs.org/goldrush/index.html The About the Gold Rush Section has much background information and the fun facts, are, well, fun.

Go to http://www.frogtown.org/The%20story.htm for a copy of Mark Twain’s story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, written in Angel’s Camp, in the California Gold Country.

See http://www.infowest.com/life/goldpan.htm instructions on how to pan for gold and you can even buy a gold pan.

Broken Feather

Extensions: 3-6 FIND OUT ABOUT THE NEZ PERCE TRIBE TODAY.

Visit http://www.lewisandclarkidaho.org/nezperce.html, for descriptions of Indians in Lewis and Clark times.

Go to the Lifelong Learning online Site:
http://www.l3-lewisandclark.com/ShowOneObject.asp?SiteID=34&ObjectID=79&ExpeditionID= The Lewis and Clark Rediscovery section has multimedia interviews with Nez Perce tribal members.

Research Kennewick Man, remains found in the Columbia Basin, that are claimed by the Umatilla, Yakama, Colville, Nez Perce, and Wanapum tribes, and which archaeologists want to retain and study. For quotes from Native Americans on this controversy see: http://www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/kman/native_american_views.htm

Also search the Nez Perce Horse, the Idaho Gray Wolf Recovery Wildlife Program, and visit the Nez Perce tribal site at http://www.nezperce.org

Extensions: 5-6 RESOLVING CONFLICT.

Read these quotes from Chief Joseph, South Africa and India:

“If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian he can live in peace. There need be no trouble. Treat all men alike. Give them the same laws. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. You might as well expect all rivers to run backward as that any man who was born a free man should be contented penned up, and denied liberty to go where he pleases. If you tie a horse to a stake, do you expect he will grow fat? If you pen an Indian up on a small spot of earth and compel him to stay there, he will not be contented nor will he grow and prosper. I have asked some of the Great White Chiefs where they get their authority to say to the Indian that he shall stay in one place, while he sees white men going where they please. They cannot tell me.”--Fee, Chester Anders, Chief Joseph: The Biography of a Great Indian. New York: Wilson-Erickson, 1936.

"Stability and peace in our land will not come from the barrel of a gun, because peace without justice is an impossibility." --Desmond Tutu, undated

"I believe that it is impossible to end hatred with hatred."--Mahatma Gandhi, 23 November 1924
from Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project at Stanford University www.stanford.edu/group/King

What conflicts led Desmond Tutu and Mahatma Gandhi to say these things? How are those conflicts similar to the United States settlers’ conflicts with the Nez Perce and other tribes?

How do students think conflicts between Indians and settlers would be solved today? How do they think they should be solved? What conflicts still exist between Indians and non-Indians in the United States? How are these being addressed?

What is non-violent protest? Do students think it works better than violence? Why? Why not? Can they find cases where non-violent protest worked in the United States? Do they believe it would have worked for the Nez Perce?
How do students solve their own conflicts. What works best? Why? What are the consequences of violent resolution of conflict? Non-violent resolution? What makes solving conflicts difficult?

Visit http://www.ccsd.net/story/ for ideas for teaching storytelling and more story telling activities. See http://www.stanford.edu/group/King for the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project at Stanford University. This site has quotes, papers, books, recordings about Martin Luther King Jr. and non-violence.

Tattered Sails

Extensions:

See http://www.teachersfirst.com/summer/cornhusk.htm for directions to make corn husk dolls.

Visit http://www.ctstateu.edu/noahweb/games.html for a listing of colonial games.

Go to http://www.monroehistoricsociety.org/cookies.html for more colonial recipes.

Orphan Train

Extensions:

To read some real orphan train stories, go to: http://www.nebraskahistory.org/sites/mnh/orphans/.

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This website was last updated on November 5, 2007