The Rag Coat

This week’s story is different than any other we have read so far because this is the first story we have read that has sad themes in it, such as death, poverty, and bullying. When planning over the weekend, I was a little bit concerned about exploring these heavier parts of life with my five year old, but then I realized these topics are all very real aspects of life and can even touch my five year old’s life earlier than I would like. What a blessing is it that his first conversations about death, compassion, poverty, life after death, funerals, bullying, being brave after bullying are conversations that his mom gets to have gently and purposefully with him. Not by surprise and not in a group setting with peers who may be nice or mean and not because we are mourning a loss…what a gift this homeschool is to him! With that in mind, I decided with his daddy’s agreement that we would look at The Rag Coat.

The Rag Coat is a touching story that takes place in the Appalachian Mountains in the time period that I call the “little house on the prairie days”. The story is about  a poor little girl, Minna, who wants to go to school but she can’t because she does not have a coat or money to afford one and the winters are too cold to walk to and from school without a coat. Sadly, Minna’s Papa dies of Miner’s cough and the family definitely cannot afford a coat now. Her mother’s quilting friends put together a coat for her made of quilting scraps and Minna excitedly attends school but is made fun of by the other children. She bravely returns and schools them on why her coat is so special and they all forgive each other and become friends. (See, I told you it was a doozy!)

On Monday, we began with handwriting (letter P) and then started our story. We discussed how sad the story was. S does not like to show that sad things get to him so he usually responds with something like “that wasn’t sad at all to me” so we talked about how you can be brave and that it IS sad and sad to everyone when someone dies or something sad happens so the right thing to say is something like “that is very sad but I can handle it” and he agreed with that. We also sad what in the world would we do if we lost our daddy and he said “probably cry and cry forever” to which I agreed yeah we probably would. This lead to a conversation and why we should treat the people we love like they are so special always because we never know how long we will have with each other. We also talked about heaven. Since this story is also in America, we didn’t make a flag but worked on a map to find the Appalachian mountain range. We talked about mountains, maps, compasses, and directions. We also went to the  dentist, and read out of Run, Bug, Run.

Tuesday, we had our first nature gang meeting! We didn’t explore nature but met at the park so all the friends could meet and play. This was so much fun.

When we got home, we looked at the social aspects of our story like teasing, standing up to bullies, and how forgiveness is a brave thing to do. We colored a rag coat and made a quilt. In the story, each rag tells a story about something or someone special so in our rag coat, we also put a bronco for Papi, a Grizzly bear because Grammy, Paw Paw, and Daddy sure love that, Captain America colors for Silas, and a flower for Nana. We learned how to draw a plaid pattern too.

Wednesday, we didn’t take a lot of pictures but we looked at Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors and how his brothers were mean to him and he had to learn to forgive too.

Thursday’s events are funny because every where I read people kept talking about how Dolly Parton wrote a song called “Coat of Many Colors” that goes perfect with the story. Well, shame on me, but I just didn’t want to listen to the song. I had an attitude about it…because…country. Well, Thursdays we usually do experiments but I didn’t have a lot so I decided we would watch it. Well, let’s just say Dolly’s story IS Minna’s story! Almost totally, and it really did happen to Dolly, except her dad didn’t die but her baby brother, they were poor, she went to a one room school, her mom made HER a coat of rags, she was made fun of for it….what in the world? So of course, I see a MOVIE TRAILER, that good ol’ Dolly turned this into a movie, so we watch it, and I cry, because its just like a Lifetime movie…and Silas says we should watch that! So I searched and searched until I found it and you know what…we watched it and it was good. Silas even asked to watch it again hahaha. So shame on me for putting that off because it really brought our story to life. Also maybe if we have another girl we will name her Dolly. Kidding! So in addition to all the wonderful Dolly Parton that happened at our house on Thursday we worked on drawing with charcoal…just like Robert McCloskey illustrated Lentil. We looked up pictures of coal mines and miners, and Silas drew a masterpiece with no direction. 

I’m so proud of him! We also made coal cookies as our experiment and they were so good! 

Sadly, I ordered some coal to be mailed to our house from a coal museum that sends free coal to teachers but it didn't arrive in time. It will still be a cool discovery once we get it! Math and reading went extremely well too but these blogs take long enough without outlining everything! Now to enjoy the long weekend :)