Black Hi story month has arrived and we have found some wonderful books at the local library to educate ourselves on the lives of Influential Black Heroes. One book mentioned President Obama:
We discovered that, Barack Obama was the 44th president of the United States and the first African American to be elected. He was born August 1, 1961 in Honolulu Hawaii. In 2009 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for strengthening international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.
This is a nice biography about Mr. and Mrs. Obama at: https://youtu.be/1-IgxSn21jU
We leanrt about Rosa Parks and her bus journey:
We found out about Ruby Bridges school hurdles.
A nice book about her is available at: https://youtu.be/MRfy2xs8Xpg
We also found information about the fascinating George Washington Carver. He was an amazing scientist, giver, and artist. We found an activity that blends art and science thanks to the creative innovators at: https://deceptivelyeducational.blogspot.com/2016/01/how-to-make-paper-flowers-bloom-art.html
To learn about GWC these three videos are excellent: https://youtu.be/ArAwUq8HVAk and
https://youtu.be/6mYW0pkvYWA and https://youtu.be/hq_H7Oa90aU
Barron has loved GWC since he first discovered him. We were lucky to find a neat poetry lesson for free at: https://poets.org/lesson-plan/teach-poem-notes-peanut-june-jordan. In this lesson we examined the following poem and shared our responses to the questions from the link below:
Notes on the Peanut by June Jordan ( 1936-2002)
For the Poet David Henderson
Hi there. My name is George
Washington
Carver.
If you bear with me
for a few minutes I
will share with you
a few
of the 30,117 uses to which
the lowly peanut has been put
by me
since yesterday afternoon.
If you will look at my feet you will notice
my sensible shoelaces made from unadulterated
peanut leaf composition that is biodegradable
in the extreme.
To your left you can observe the lovely Renoir
masterpiece reproduction that I have cleverly
pieced together from several million peanut
shell chips painted painstakingly so as to
accurately represent the colors of the original!
Overhead you will spot a squadron of Peanut B-52
Bombers flying due west.
I would extend my hands to greet you
at this time
except for the fact that I am holding a reserve
supply of high energy dry roasted peanuts
guaranteed to accelerate protein assimilation
precisely documented by my pocket peanut calculator;
May I ask when did you last contemplate the relationship
between the expanding peanut products industry
and the development of post-Marxian economic theory
which (Let me emphasize) need not exclude moral attrition
of prepuberty
polymorphic
prehensile skills within the population age sectors
of 8 to 15?
I hope you will excuse me if I appear to be staring at you
through these functional yet high fashion and prescriptive
peanut contact lenses providing for the most
minute observation of your physical response to all of this
ultimately nutritional information.
Peanut butter peanut soap peanut margarine peanut
brick houses and house and field peanut per se well
illustrate the diversified
potential of this lowly leguminous plant
to which you may correctly refer
also
as the goober the pindar the groundnut
and the ground pea/let me
interrupt to take your name down on my
pocket peanut writing pad complete with matching
peanut pencil that only 3 or 4
chewing motions of the jaws will sharpen
into pyrotechnical utility
and no sweat.
Please:
Speak right into the peanut!
Your name?
We discussed what invention Barron would create and he said binoculars and telescopes to view the world far away. I would invent a time travelling machine. Barron wants to invent this because it would be neat to see each other and outer space and the world. I would invent this so we could spend time with loved ones or people we miss from our past.
We examined two pictures and immediately Barron was drawn to the colour blue in the sky since that is his favourite colour, I was drawn to the center picture because the green was vibrant. When we looked at the second picture we found our attention going to George and the seed. We think these murals (paintings done on a wall) are aimed at people who are farmers or people who might want to know more about peanuts in the industry. Comparing the images we noticed that the colour was different, we were only shown a portion of the scene, and the painting that was zoomed seemed to have more of our attention whereas the larger mural had a sense of movement and wonder in it. We feel that these pictures relate or are connected to the poem because they talk about George Washington Carver's inventions and importance of the peanut, he mentions how he tried to capture the exact hues in a famous Renoir painting by using peanuts. The hues in the two paintings were different perhaps one is more accurate to what it really looked like when being there touching or observing the wall versus looking at a picture. We understand how this can happen because we took a picture in the mid afternoon with the flash on and suddenly it appeared a sunny day in our photo.
Why the murals, well they show the beauty of the peanut, the soil, the importance of the farmer, and the advice of George. The lesson then asked us to examine the phrase “lowly peanut” and “potential of this lowly leguminous plant” which we used our dictionary to find out that lowly means uncommon, not important or grand.
We felt the audience of this poem might be to change the mind of people who think peanuts are nothing special or important. The first phrase says a peanut isn't much, however the second phrase asks you to think of what the common peanut could become, to seek the greatness in it. We still think the poem is talking to people who are farmers or gardeners. The lesson mentions that the poem uses hyperbole (exaggeration) and we found this as an example: "I have cleverly pieced together from several million peanut shell chips" although it may have taken a lot of peanut shells to make the exact paint colour we think several million is an exaggeration. On this topic we started wondering if we could figure out if George Washington Carver really liked Renoir or if that was the poet June's preference or what she thought George may like.
We are familiar with GWC as a painter as we found some similarities between him and Georgia O'Keefe in an earlier post on this blog. We learnt that, "Carver’s story is fascinating, and his life was so clearly influenced by both art and science, that it’s clear why the California African American Museum’s exhibit “World Without End: The George Washington Carver Project” will be included as part of “Pacific Standard Time: Art x Science x LA”. It doesn’t take place until 2024, but it’s something to look forward to if you’re in California." Source: https://cloudistro.com/george-washington-carver-was-an-artist-long-before-he-became-a-peanut-scientist/
The images we were referring to are found at: https://www.loc.gov/resource/highsm.07051/?r=-0.071,-0.094,1.111,0.473,0
https://www.loc.gov/item/2010638461/
May the creative talents and courage within you be revealed.
