First we recited (and one child learned for the first time) the pledge of allegiance while a special helper got to hold a small flag. We talked about what patriotism was, and what clues were in the book that suggest the townspeople were patriotic. Then we discussed what the red, white, and blue colors in our flag represent. This was slightly arbitrary on my part since at the time of the first flag no one recorded any special meaning attached to the colors. Over the years a few different traditional meanings emerged. I went with: white = purity; blue = honesty and perseverance; red = courage and valor.
The children colored flags and wrote down the meanings of the colors in their FIAR notebooks.
Then each of the children received a harmonica and got to practice playing it!! A harmonica was central to the plot of the book. It was super fun to play them! Lentil liked to practice his harmonica in the bathtub because there "the tone was improved one hundred percent." So we went into the bathtub and played ours there too! We compared the sound in the bathtub to the sound in the family room, and we all agreed we sounded better in the bathtub. :-)
Next we talked about music notes, as they are pictured on several pages of the book. We talked about how half notes and quarter notes are smaller pieces of the whole note. I demonstrated with money (a dollar bill, 2 fifty cent pieces, and 4 quarters) and then demonstrated again by cutting an apple into half and then into quarters. We ate the apple pieces for snack!
We finished with another page in our FIAR notebooks:
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