If you’ve stumbled here from Pinterest, or some other site … welcome! While each of these books/lessons can stand alone, they are also a part of a year-long series that we have taught at our homeschool co-op. Each lesson builds in part on the one before. Some stories also have similar themes with the books that go before/after them. If you are interested in more information, or to see the complete booklist, check out our main page, More FIAR – Inspired Literature-Based Lesson Plans, especially for homeschool and homeschool co-ops. Thanks for looking around, and welcome to the site!
Amber on the Mountain
by Tony Johnston
Things I Need:
Amber on the Mountain Book
Amber on the Mountain Handwriting Sheet
Large Map of the United States
Dry Erase Marker to Mark Map (optional)
Map of the United States Worksheets B&W
Map of the United States Worksheets Color
Chocolate Chips
Map Cutouts (found at MrPrintables.com)
Crayons
Scissors
Gluesticks
Review
If you’re following along with this year’s FIAR-inspired Co-op Curriculum, take a moment to review last week’s book, When I Was Young In the Mountains. Discuss how does Mountain and City life differ? What types of things didn’t they have in their mountain homes 100 years ago (running water, heat, simpler foods and toys, etc). Take a moment to review what a “setting” is, and what “main characters”. What was the setting of last weeks book? (The Appalachian Mountains)
Preview the Book
If you want to preview the book (or show this to your class instead of you reading, this is a wonderful read-aloud version.
Introduce the Book:
Because this week’s book is a continuation of our Mountain Theme, this was easy to introduce. We took a moment to introduce Amber and Anna, our two main characters. We talked about the setting being up at the top of the mountains. We encouraged the students to listen and see if they noticed any particular theme as we read the book (there are a couple: 1) that mountain life is lonely and 2) that almost anything can be accomplished if you are determined and set your mind to do it.
Last weeks book showed how mountain life can be simpler and harder with things. This weeks book shows how mountain life can be harder on the soul, and very lonely. Even to be deprived of simple things like school and education. (Even for homeschoolers, who aren’t accustomed to going to school daily, you can point out that her grandmother couldn’t teach her to read because she didn’t know how to read either)
While Reading the Story:
Look for these themes throughout the book and take pauses to emphasize them to the class.
Should Amber give up because reading is to hard? Should Anna’s Dad stop making the road because it is to difficult? Another thing to point out – it’s not that Amber is lacking. She just has different skills, skills that Anna doesn’t have. So they teach each other.
In our class, we had some fluent readers and some just beginning to recognize letters. We took a simple work like CAT and showed how, if you don’t recognize the letters, it looks the same as scribbles, just as it did to Anna. But gradually over time, you learn that C means “Cuh” and A means “Ah” and T means “Tuh” and you realized that C-A-T spells CAT.
After the Story:
Other themes to bring out: Should Anna give up reading? Has anyone gotten a letter? Has anyone sent a letter?
Take out a large map of the United States. If you have one that shows the mountains, even better. Point out the locations of the biggest mountain ranges in the United States, particularly the Rockies and the Appalachian Mountains.
Where could this book have taken place? Any Mountains, but we chose to focus on the Appalachian Mountains.
If you choose to make the distinction … there are 18 states that touch the Appalachian Mountain Range. There are 14 states included in the Appalachian Trail. There is a general area around Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, that is generally referred to as “Appalachia”. You can mention some or all of these facts. For our class, we chose to focus on the entire Appalachian Mountain Range. Since our group is within Virginia, it made sense for us to focus on this area. Perhaps if you lived in the Rockies, you may focus on that mountain range instead.
This is a good time to point out your classes COUNTRY, STATE, and CITY again.
Geography Lesson – Where are the Appalachian Mountains?
In our class, we rotate between Geography and Language, depending on the book we’re focusing on. In today’s lesson, we focused on Geography to create this map depicting both the states that are within the Appalachian Mountain Range and the location of the Mountains.
Here’s how to do it. FIRST – I found an AWESOME freebie map of the United States here. You may have to click through the site just a little bit to find it (per their copyright request). But if you click over to “LEARN” and then “GEOGRAPHY”, you will find this:
They have both a black and white AND a color map of the United States. Each kid was given a black and white map and a small handful of chocolate chips. We used the chocolate chips as our mountains to show the line that the Appalachian Mountains Traveled up the East Coast of our Country (no eating until you’re done!)
Then, after they got their chocolate chips in the right spot, they were each given a strip of mountains to cut and paste onto their sheets. As they removed the chocolate chips, they replaced them with these paper mountains.
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| Click here for printable version |
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| Click here for printable version |
Handwriting Sheet
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| Click here for printable version |
We used Proverbs 17:17 as our handwriting go-along for this week. If you have time to help the class memorize this short verse, even better.
That’s it for this week! To see what we’ve done so far in our Homeschool Co-op’s Literature Series this year, click here. Each lesson builds on the one before and seeks to cover basic geography within the book, historical contexts, a handwriting sheet and a language arts lesson, as it applies to the book.
