Higgins Bend Song and Dance- Part 2

We spent a total of three weeks doing Higgins Bend Song and Dance from volume 4 of FIAR. It is a great example of a tall tale in which a fisherman tries to catch an elusive catfish. Both I-5 and R7 had a great time with this story. Below are the notebook pages and activities we did during the study.

I-5's notebook- the kids put in pictures of a local creek with lots of bends on the title page and they each wrote a tall tale and we reviewed other tall tales we've read.

We talked about money and had lots of money fun.

We used the print outs from HSS to talk about potatoes and our favorite potato recipes.

We talked about bends in rivers and how they are made along with river math- we discussed why water is so heavy and some of the longest rivers in the world.

Here R7 is trying her hand at some watercolor art. Prang brand comes with such a great brush and the colors are so rich. We also tried out some watercolor paper on this project. I highly recommend it for all watercolor art!! It looks fantastic and even J2 didn't make a mess.

I-5 chose to recreate an illustration with the big fish looking up at the fisherman.

We did short book reports on the story and talked a lot about animals and plants that live near or in rivers.

They tried their hand at cross section drawings.

The River Life book- I used print outs from Enchanted Learning to make a book about the creatures found there. We read books about the different animals and plants then they had to color them correctly.

For the animals not found at EL, I used google images and found a perfect loon and red-winged blackbird.

Higgins Bend Song and Dance

We stopped to take pictures of a real "bendy" creek very close by to our house.

Yesterday we began Higgins Bend Song and Dance a tall tale about a man who vows to catch a giant catfish which hangs out in a deep pool at Higgins Bend. One of the first things we did was to visit a creek with many bends in it. We stopped by on the way to co-op to get a few pictures. Seriously, this poor farmer has no field the way this creek bends back and forth on both sides of the road. Then we "followed" the creek all the way down the road a ways. See for yourself!

This picture was taken out the other side of the van- just opposite the above picture.

This one I just thought was cool because you can see how high the water was recently with our huge rain and ice storm and snow melt this past weekend. You have to click on the picture maybe to see where the water level ice is still stuck to the bottom branches.

This is a volume 4 book with two weeks worth of ideas. Here's how we plan to spend the time:

Week 1

• Monday- discuss river bends and what makes them, review tall tale, review running a business and compare this one to others we've encountered, point out cross section drawing
• Tuesday- write a short tall tale, discuss loners, begin money notebook pages
  
• Wednesday- water color picture of a river bend, money pages
• Thursday- money game, begin study of river life
• Friday- river life and animal classification

Week 2:

• Monday- Potato stamping, morning star
• Tuesday- Fish classification
• Wednesday- try out cross section drawing, worms
• Thursday- Water numbers (volume of a river, river stats around the world, measuring river volume and depth)
• Friday- insect classification, finish up river animal studies

This looks to be a promising study with a much needed break from cold weather thoughts! Last summer we went on a stream safari and we can draw on that experience when we talk about some of these topics. All this classification is near and dear to this biology teacher's heart!