Follow My Leader – Unit Study

Reading the book “Follow My Leader” by James Garfield took us on a unit study adventure that was better than I had anticipated.

I haven’t mentioned it yet, but I recently offered to help a friend who was in a bit of a jam. Her oldest son (age 11) is coming to our house and doing homeschool with us one day per week for the rest of the school year. This new arrangement has prompted me to do just a wee bit more prep than I used to for our “friend day”.

We used “Follow My Leader” for our evening family read aloud. This title wasn’t available from Libby or Audible so I really did read it aloud. I read one chapter per night except for 2 movie nights per week. While we were reading it, I did a library card catalog search for “Braille” and set the filter for children’s books.

I found “Braille for the Sighted“. This book includes the Braille alphabet with exercises for practicing reading and writing by seeing the dots. It was a great activity for my 3 children + 1. While the kiddos worked on translating some Braille words, I read aloud from “Who Was Louis Braille?” They all seemed to enjoy the activity.

For movie night, our family watched Pick of the Litter on Prime Video. We all really enjoyed this documentary about setting eye dogs raised from birth. It was really well done.

I really like LitWits and we’ve enjoyed doing their online workshops and on-demand videos. For “Follow My Leader”, I purchased the printables and used the free teaching ideas on their website. You can check it out using the link below.

https://www.litwitsworkshops.com/the-litwits-explorers-guide-for-follow-my-leader

We’ve done several LitWit books before, so my kiddos each have a box that I pack up all the supplies in. For this book, LitWits suggested the optional addition of stuffed puppies and I couldn’t resist!

Coincidentally, shortly after finishing the book, we saw this awesome sculpture at LEGOLAND California.

Happy homeschooling friends!