18 Feb Five in a Row: Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel

We have been reading Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel, as part of our Five in a Row (FIAR) curriculum. This is a classic children’s book, written in 1939. It is about a man who takes his well-loved steam shovel, Mary Anne, on an adventure to show that they are just as good – or better than all of the new gas, electric and diesel shovels.

Of course, we read the book several times, but Clark and Luci enjoyed watching the movie for one of the days.

Community Helpers and Transportation

The story of Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel includes a lot of community helpers. Many of them came to watch Mike and Mary Ann dig the cellar for the new town hall. There was the police man, the postman, the telegraph boy, the milkman, the doctor, the farmer, the fire department and a teacher. Some came on foot, others came on their particular mode of transportation. We found a cute little game all about community helpers and transportation for Luci to play from Miss-Kindergarten.

She had to match up all of the community helpers with their transportation. Yup – in her Pjs and unruly hair. It’s how we roll somedays. Just keeping things real.

While Luci was working on this project, Clark was writing a paper on what he would like to be when he grows up. It mostly had to do with playing and eating candy and living on a rainbow, so I’m guessing he was clearly not inspired by the community helpers discussed in the book.

I happen to always have a stash of consignment sale or garage sale finds that should correspond with a Five in a Row project. Today I  found a Lego firetruck to construct that would go along well with our community helper theme.

We worked together, taking turns with the instructions. Clark is getting really good at following them. Luci doesn’t have much patience for it yet, but she sticks around because she can’t bear to not be involved.

The final result was a pretty detailed firetruck with lots of functionality. There’s a moving ladder, a fire hose that unravels and even some water to spray. I don’t remember Lego being this exciting when I was a kid! It made for many hours of imaginative play, which is always a great way to spend the afternoon!

Language

This row, I had Clark start to work on writing stories. We discussed personification, using the steam shovel named Mary Anne as an example. Clark and Luci both decided to write a story, personifying their blankets, which they both have always called their “beek.” Here is Luci’s, all about BEEX, her “beek.”

Art

Clark and Luci did not have a great concept of what exactly a backhoe was, so we took a drive one afternoon to a local construction site to observe some at work. When we came home, I printed them out a free printable that I had found online of a backhoe and all of its’ different parts. Unfortunately, the website I got it from has since being taken down.

Clark and Luci colored in all of the pieces, deciding not to got with red, like Mary Ann in the book. These kids are too creative to stick to that! They then cut out all of the pieces and connected them with some help with brass connectors.

We finished up by gluing on their pictures into the windows. Now we’ve got some shoveling to do!

Here are our finished products:

As we learned about what steam shovels could do, we wanted to explore a little more about construction. I blogged HERE about how we built forts and circuits for the first time.

Science and History:  Steam Power

The steam shovel in the book brought the most interest to Clark and Luci. They were fascinated by it and Clark was very interested to know how exactly it worked. Being as I know nothing about such things, we did some research together. We got some books at the library, and did some experiments. I blogged about it in more detail HERE.

I’m hoping you enjoy this book as much as we did!