Mountain Man Unit

While I was trying to decide just how to start teaching Dylan at home, I came across a website that I LOVE. I got most of my first unit ideas there. She did a mountain man unit and I thought that was very fitting for my rough and tough boys. Once I read that there was a mountain man rendezvous over Labor Day weekend, I was sold. The timing would be perfect! Here are some of the things we did during our mountain man unit.

• Found the kids bags to use as their possibles' bags and discussed possibles' bags
• Hiking - lots of wandering through the mountains
• Ate beef jerky
• Attended the mountain man rendezvous - one in Ogden and one in Ft Bridger in Wyoming
• Purchased some wooden toys at the rendezvous - a knife, bow and arrow set, and a sword. So worth the money! The boys played with these throughout the rest of the unit and beyond.
• Went to the zoo (specifically to see bears, cougars and other mountain animals, but the zoo is the zoo...we pretty much saw it all)
• Played at the Treehouse Museum
• Learned about Audubon and then painted our own pictures

Hiking with our possibles' bags

Hogle Zoo

Treehouse Museum

Mountain Man Rendezvous - Ft. Buenaventura

Mountain Man Rendezvous - Ft. Bridger

Painting like Audubon

Books We Read

I got this book list from Home School Frolic

Forest Cats of North America by Jerry Kobalenko. If it were up to Dylan, we would only ever check out animal and dinosaur books. Any book with facts about animals is always a favorite for him. We read portions, but really just flipped through this one for facts.

Mountain Men: Cornerstones of Freedom by Andrew Santella. This was a really good book for me to read to review the overall facts about the mountain men. Then I was prepared for day one of school to teach. I tried to read parts of the book, but it didn't hold the boys' attention very well. Dylan did love looking at the maps though.

Jedediah Smith by Sharlene Nelson.

Grizzly Bear by Jason Stone.

Kit Carson by Jan Gleiter. Dylan really enjoyed this book. He "became" Kit Carson and reenacted parts of the story for days.

Audubon: Painter of Birds on the Wild Frontier by Jennifer Armstrong. I'll be honest, art is not my greatest strength. It was great to have a suggestion to include Audubon and to remind myself to include art - appreciating real art and trying to create our own - in our home school.

The Wonder of Wolves by Patricia Lantier-Sampon.

Albert Bierstadt: Painter of the American West by Gordon Hendricks.

It was nice to have the unit laid out with books and everything and then be able to adapt it to our own situation. I was already feeling overwhelmed enough with the thought of home schooling. The last thing I needed was to complicate things. We kept the unit fun and interesting and moved onto the next unit when it was obvious the kids were bored and I ran out of ideas. I found a few other books we used during the unit too. Of those, most were okay, but not spectacular. However, we did find one that we really enjoyed.

Mountain Men: True Grit and Tall Tales by Andrew Glass. This book was fun for us. It took a lot of the old mountain man stories and put them all together in one entertaining book. We read a story or two here and there throughout the unit.