“Bread, Grain and Yeast” Links, Books, Paintings, Etc.

We’ve been studying about bread, grain and yeast through KONOS. It has been a fun unit. The unit doesn’t just include those three items, however… but we get to learn about different types of grains (lately we are on rice) and we are watching our food labels for grain products. The kids will get to do mushroom art next week. We might do some yeast science experiments also. I have a great book for that (listed below). We also took a field trip to the regional 4-H Office and learned about the club, we bought bread at a bread store (where you can get it much cheaper than the grocery store), and we are planning a trip to a bakery. I toured one as a kid in Texas, but I’m not sure what is around Arkansas that we can go see. I have some research to do.

Since we most likely will have to move at the end of the month, we are taking it slow and easy with our last unit of the year and we have moved the other few units we had planned to do this month to August. I’m using the “calm before the storm” to catch up on grading and decluttering… because I know that packing and boxing is soon to follow. What a fun unit to end your year on… it almost brings back the feeling of the holidays to be in the kitchen baking and cooking together. We even made some cookies for our neighbors last week, and that always feels good to share with others.

Below are some of the websites, links and artwork that we have found online to help us with our unit:

One of the assignments in the unit is to look at artwork that has to do with grains, farming, and such. Here are a few of our favorite paintings that we have found online for this unit…

My personal favorite was Dave Barnhouse’s “Golden Harvest”. I love the combine pouring wheat into the tractor’s trailer… and the light in the puddles. It reminds me of small-town Texas and the fun I had on my grandparent’s farm as a kid. They weren’t wheat farmers, but they had plenty of cattle and a tractor I rode on with grandpa. Of course, he also had a Chevy pick-up and half a zillion barn cats that we would chase… and the odd horse or two.

Here are some links to a few more paintings:

• Old 1500’s corn harvest paintings
• Wendall Anschutz’s oil paintings
• Bales by Gary Earnest Smith
• Final Harvest at Art4God

We also found a bible story PDF package on the Parable of the Tares online… a great story about farm equipment that you can read online (by John Deere) called “Johnny’s Tractor Storybook“… some science questions to go with the tractor and farm equipment book… and a site with farm equipment photos and explanations.

Here’s a list of our library books that we checked out for the unit. Some are listed by KONOS and some are just ones that we found on our own:

• Tiny Tortilla by Arlene Williams (picture book)
• The Tortilla Cat – Nancy Willard (picture book)
• Family Farm – Thomas Locker (picture book)
• From Seed to Sunflower – Lifecycles (picture book)
• The Little Red Hen – Illustrated by Amye Rosenberg (picture book)
• Harvest Home – Jane Yolen (picture book)
• Ling Cho and His Three Friends – V.J. Pacilio (picture book)
• The Bread Book All About Bread and How to Make It – Carolyn Meyer
• Bread Comes to Life – George Levenson
• Children of the Dust Days – Karen Mueller Coombs
• Good Mushrooms and Bad Toadstools – Allan Fowler
• Nature Close Up: Slime Molds and Fungi – Elaine Pascoe
• Kitchen Science – Shar Levine & Leslie Johnstone
• Mushrooms: A Lerner Natural Science Book
• Pastatively Italy – Virgina McLean (recipes and history)
• Look What Came From Italy – Miles Harvey (has pretzel story version in it)
• The Story of Grains; Wheat, Corn and Rice – Peggy Parish (picture book)
• Rice is Life – Rita Golden Gelman (picture book with recipes)
• Wheat, The Golden Harvest – Dorothy Hinshaw Patent
• Ms. Frizzle’s Adventures, Imperial China – Joanna Cole & Bruce Degen (picture book)
• Everybody Cooks Rice – Norah Dooley
• Bread the Staff of Life – Walter Buehr
• The Mushroom Hunt – Simon Frazer (picture book)
• Bake Bread – Hannah Solomon
• Pasta Factory – Hana Machotka (picture book)
• Knead It, Punch It, Bake It! The Ultimate Breadmaking Book for Parents and Kids – Judith and Evan Jones
• Breads and Biscuits – S.J.A. Villiers (picture recipe book)
• The Cooking of Italy – Matthew Locricchio
• A Cow, A Bee, A Cookie and Me – Meredith Hooper (picture book for younger kids but has a recipe for Honey Cookies! Yummm!)
• The Duchess Bakes a Cake – Virginia Kahl (cute poem about yeast and baking)
• Germs; The Library of Disease–Causing Organisms: Fungi and Molds – Jennifer Viegas
• The Gingerbread Man – Carol Jones (picture book)
• The Runaway Tortilla – Eric A. Kimmel (alternate version of Gingerbread man – picture book)
• What Would Jesus Eat – Don Kolbert, M.D. (has great section on process of whitening flour)

So far we have really enjoyed our books. We have already read most of them and are working on the recipe ones right now as we spend most of the week baking. Fungus, Yeast and Toadstools are next! Then we’ll spend a little time on Italian cooking (not because it came with the unit, but because it is a great way to start the summer off… home made pizza dough, learning about Italy, keeping up with our Rosetta Stone Italian lessons, and doing GeeART for fun).

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