12 Dec All About Coal Mining and Cookies

As part of our Five in a Row curriculum, we are reading the book, The Rag Coat.  It is a sweet story of a little girl growing up in the Appalachian mountains in a poor coal mining community.  She was very close to her father who worked all day in the coal mines.  For our homeschool study today, we are going to learn all about coal mining and cookies. How do those get into the same sentence? Read on… we had so much fun!

You Can Get Your Own Coal!

My young children, of course, had no idea what coal was, so we started with the very basics.  I found a place that will actually mail you several different pieces of coal for free (you can find it HERE)!  We unpackaged the coal and played with it, getting our hands nice and dirty.  We then compared our hands to the pictures in the book of the miners and decided that coal mining was a very dirty job.

Mining for Coal Math Game

To learn more, we watched some videos and talked about what coal mining may have been like.  I found a cute counting game online called “Mining for Coal” which I printed out to play with Clark and Luci.

We didn’t have dice, so I wrote out numbers 1 – 5 and put them in a bowl to pick from when it was our turn.  We used peg dolls as playing pieces and we used raisins to represent pieces of coal.  One raisin was equivalent to one ton of coal.  The goal was to be the first to collect 50 tons of coal.  Believe me, this was a challenge because these kids just wanted to eat their coal!

Clark and Luci loved the game.  It could also have been the fact that they got to eat the raisins as a snack when we finished.  I’m not sure, but either way, it was a great game to get Luci to count – she counted perfectly up to 20, and for Clark to do some addition and subtraction without even knowing it.

More About Coal

Why do we mine for coal?  We found some information at the American Coal Foundation and on Kentucky Coal Education.  We learned that about half of the electricity in the United States comes from burning coal. Power plants burn coal to make energy which is used to produce electricity.  We made a list of ways that we use electricity in our house.

We watched a short documentary on what life was like the coal towns.

I had seen a couple of blogging homeschoolers do some “coal mining” with their kids with salt dough that they had painted black or something similar.  I loved the idea – making memories with the kids while educating them in a way they will never forget!  So I came up with my own version, since it’s the Christmas season.  I decided to make some “Lumps of Coal” Cookies (which I may or may not use on Christmas Morning as a joke on the kids…

Lumps of Coal Cookies Recipe

This recipe is so easy. It literally takes about 10 minutes total to make!

• 1 package of Oreos®
• 1 bag of large marshmallows
• 4 tablespoons butter

Place wax or parchment paper on a cookie sheet.  Butter the paper thinly and set aside.  Reduce the Oreos to crumbs – I used the food processor.  Then, melt the butter and marshmallows together on the stovetop or in the microwave (for about 1 minute and 30 seconds).  The marshmallows will be puffed up to the top of the bowl.  Stir in the ground cookies and transfer to the cookie sheet.  Butter your hands and spread the mixture out in an uneven and sloppy way.  You don’t want this to look perfect.  Allow to set for at least 30 minutes.  Break apart in irregular-sized chunks.

“Mining” for Coal Cookies

Let me say this much:  if coal tastes half this good, I wouldn’t mind getting it for Christmas!  I wrapped them individually and told Clark and Luci what we were going to do with them.  Clark was especially excited and asked if it was going to be like collecting Easter eggs.  I didn’t want them to think mining was an easy game, so I hid the “coal” between the blankets of Luci’s bed.  Together, Clark and Luci decided that Luci was going to hold the flashlight.  Clark was going to give directions and collect the coal.

It took a lot of cooperation between the two of them and lots of giggles.  Luci got distracted a few times and forgot that Clark needed the flashlight to see the coal.  Every few minutes, she would pop her head out from underneath the covers and flash the light everywhere but where it was needed.

The “Coal” Had to be Sent Away for Processing

Together, they eventually found all the pieces of “coal.”  They had assumed they were going to eat it all and were shocked to learn that miners can’t keep all the coal that they mine!  I made them give me back all of the cookies so that they could be “sent to the power plants to be processed into electricity.”  They were able to keep one to eat, as payment for their “hard work.”  They were ok with that.

Don’t miss the rest of our Five in a Row: The Rag Coat adventure!