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Heroes of History: George Washington Carver – Review
We’re gearing up for another living history co-op event here, and so we jumped at the chance to read Heroes of History- George Washington Carver from YWAM Publishing as this amazing man fits into our time period perfectly. We were torn, though – there were so many good titles to choose from! We were also interested in Orville Wright, Thomas Edison, and Milton Hershey. We’ll be looking for those soon, I’m sure! These are all part of the Heroes of History series, each book comes with a unit study guide, making it easy for any homeschooler to tailor this book to his/her own specific needs.
The unit study includes all sorts of neat pieces. One, that often seems to be overlooked, is a quote section. I love that! My kids each keep notebooks especially for writing down quotes from famous people, and I enjoyed finding this section.
The next part of the study talks about making display corners or collections with items related to George Washington Carver. I can see young children getting really excited about this. It might also be a neat thing to use with co-ops or book clubs; they could add to the collection as they read the book.
Another great part of the unit study is questions for each chapter. There are four, and they each target a different theme: vocabulary, facts, comprehension, and interpretation. I love how comprehensive these questions are, but as my Big Helper was swamped with writing a massive research paper while beginning this study, we used them as discussion questions instead.
There are lots of great essay questions and creative writing assignments, too. I hated passing up such fun ideas, but, alas, the research paper ….
So we moved on to the board game. Each kid took a large sheet of paper and designed a version of ‘Chutes and Ladders’ with a George Washington Carver theme. They used the trials in his life as chutes and good things that happened as ladders to climb. We love making and playing games as part of our school work, and this was especially fun. My Big Helper also researched more information about several facts that she wanted to use and constructed her game like a timeline, so her events are sequential. She did additional research as she was building the game to be sure that she had the events in the proper order. It was fun to make and fun to play!
Another of the projects was to collect flowers and plants, then crush them to make dyes. We talked about how Carver was interested in finding new uses for plants (like the peanut), and so I asked my kids to think about the purposes of different plants and create entries in their nature journals that might be from Carver’s perspective. Boy, did they get excited about this one!
My Little Man started thinking about how plants propagate. He spent some time at the computer learning about grafting, sprouting, and such, and then he went outside and found a few plants to work with. He tried grafting things together and then planted them in this bucket …
and took a sprouting potato to plant here. He cut apart the eyes from other parts of the potato and planted them in different places to see what would happen. It was neat to see him get so excited about his project!
My Big Helper took a more conventional approach. She went outside and felt different plants to find leaves and blossoms that she thought might stain things, and then she asked for a jar and began to mash her collection. She experimented with rubbing the mashed bits on paper in her nature journal and with adding different amounts of water to see what would create a good watercolor. After this, she researched the plant she was using to learn more about it.
My Big Helper ended up with a really colorful entry for her nature journal and enjoyed all of the experimentation!
My Big Helper also created a very detailed timeline for Carver’s life. She used lots of vocabulary words and included major national events that were happening during his lifetime. This project really helped her to put things into perspective.
The unit study discusses how to hold a cumulative event, and we’re taking our Carver work to our living history day event later this week! The kids will take their board games, and we’ll take peanuts to turn into peanut butter (even though Carver is not the one who invented it, he did much work with peanuts).
My kids both really enjoyed the format of this study and of the biography itself. My Big Helper was especially excited to learn about what a sensible and smart man he was and to learn more about his values. His dedication to his work and to helping other people make him an exciting man to study, and this unit study was perfect for studying all aspects of his life.
