Thursday, November 9, 2017

Easter Fires

Author and Illustrator: Mary Dodson Wade, Patty Rucker
Genre: Historical Fiction
Awards:
Grade Level: 2nd - 5th grade

The books tells of a family from Germany traveling across the sea to live in Texas. They were promised a land with a house; their whole life would be set. However, it did not work out this way. The settlers did not expect for no houses or no supplies. The men who came from Germany gather together and made friendly offerings to the Indians who preoccupied the nearby land. One night, Mama, Sofia, and Wilhelm were frightened by the fires on the top of the hills; so mama told them how the Easter Bunny boiled and decorated the eggs for Easter. After traveling from place to place, the family finally settled down after a peaceful treaty was made. 

I would not use this book in my classroom since it is not age- appropriate. However, this book provides insight on what life was like for settlers, the worries, and missions they had to complete. A great activity for students to make connections of history and the present day would be to reenact this book. Each small group creates a short skit of a chapter in this book, and act it out to the class. This engages students, and encourages them to actively learn history.  

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