For our last The Rag Coat lesson, we learned about coal. We got a lot of our information from this kid’s coal website which told us where coal was formed, how long it took and how people are able to access it. We also discussed a bit about how it can impact the environment (and miners’ health, like Minna’s father). Doo was pretty fascinated by the deep mining information and how people built elevators and tracks underground.
After talking about coal I then placed chocolate coal pieces (’tis the season) around the living room and gave Doo a cardboard mining pick. She searched around for the coal (like an egg hunt) and really enjoyed herself. When she found them all she laid them out on the table and counted each one. Then we both enjoyed eating the “coal”, which tasted like Nestle’s Crunch.
To top off the lesson, we listened to Loretta Lynn’s Coal Mine’s Daughter on Rhapsody.
At the end of the lesson, Doo exclaimed “That was fun!”
When Minna’s father passes away we get a brief look into the funeral reception held at the family home. Minna and her younger brother are frightened by the amount of people inside their home and Minna is especially disturbed that people are wearing black. She feels like that represents the coal that killed her father and that her father would have preferred the “bright colors of the day” instead.
We discussed funerals and mourning – their meanings and what they may look like. Doo forgot what a graveyard was so I showed her a photo (she has seen pretend ones at Disneyland) and she also asked to see a picture of a casket.
We also discussed her Mammy’s (Daddy’s mother) funeral a little bit. Mammy passed away a year before Doo was born. After a little discussion she wanted to see a photo of Mammy (she has seen plenty plus video but I think she wanted to feel close to her) and then also wanted to see a photo of the dress I wore which I did not have readily available. We had talked about graveyards and burying a person in a casket so I also mentioned cremation since this is what we did for Mammy. And how Mammy’s ashes were spread in the Atlantic near her Auntie and in the Pacific near us.
Tomorrow is our last lesson for The Rag Coat and then time for another book before we take a week off.
Minna’s mother sells quilts to support the family. After the father’s death, she continues to sew them but also makes them with “The Quilting Mothers”. Minna’s new coat is basically quilted together with old scraps and rags.
We watched people make quilts by hand…
…and by machine.
We looked at photos of various quilts as well and then Doo colored her own. Later on, she even called me into her room to show me a drawing of a quilt in one of her books (she’ll still do this for lighthouses!).
Mommy woke up with a head cold this morning and the Doo appears to be coming down with it as well. It’s a rainy day in Los Angeles. We have the Christmas lights on and are listening to Tori Amos’ new solstice CD. I decided to go ahead with our lesson for today which ended up being a bit difficult because the reading was tickling my throat and I kept stopping to cough. But we survived and still enjoyed ourselves.
Minna lives in the Appalachian Mountains. After our reading, we read a little bit about the Appalachians and found the mountain range on her U.S. map. We discussed a bit about Appalachian Culture and some differences we saw in The Rag Coat compared what we are used to in our lives (such as Minna’s old fashioned stove compared to our modern one).
We also enjoyed some YouTube videos on the area, including this one:
Now we’re cozied up for the evening with Sting’s new winter CD playing and Doo playing with an early Yule gift (I couldn’t help myself), a Christmas Barbie. Christmas Barbie is going to “ride a carriage to Boston” now. Modern plastic doll meets Minna’s simple transportation in the Appalachians.
We started The Rag Coat today which is about a girl who lives in the Appalachian Mountains. Her father works in the coal mines and eventually dies from “miner’s cough”. The family is poor so the girl, Minna, does not have a coat to wear to school (she goes to school for the first time around age 9). Her mother and her mother’s friends quilt her a coat out of scraps from other sewing projects. Minna loves that each piece has a story to it (baby’s blanket, etc) and shares these stories with her classmates.
I printed out the first template here and ripped up some construction paper for rags. Doo colored the picture and glued the scraps onto the coat to make her own rag coat.
