Unit Study: Immigration

In the final portion of our history study, answering the question of how everyone in the United States got here, we developed a basic understanding of immigration throughout the history of our country. I really enjoyed this unit study, as I've always loved hearing immigration stories. Must be all those American Girl and Dear America books I read as a child... Anywhere, here are the books we read:

Paper Son: the Inspiring Story of Tyrus Wong, Immigrant and Artist, by Julie Leung
Where Butterflies Fill the Sky : a Story of Immigration, Family, and Finding Home, by Zahra Marwan
My Shoes and I: Crossing Three Borders, by Rene Colato Lainez
Gittel's Journey: An Ellis Island Story, by Leslea Newman
We Came to America, by Faith Ringgold
From the Tops of the Trees, by Kao Kalia Yang
How Many Days to America?: a Thanksgiving Story, by Eve Bunting
All the Way to America: the Story of a Big Italian Family and a Little Shovel, by Dan Yaccarino
Nathan's Song, by Leda Schubert 
Two White Rabbits, by Jairo Buitrago
Playing at the Border: a Story of Yo-Yo Ma, by Joanna Ho
Meet Kirsten: An American Girl, by Janet Beeler Shaw
Ellis Island and Immigration for Kids: a History with 21 Activities, by Jean Daigneau

We kicked off this study by reading and learning about Ellis Island, and talking about what we would bring with us, if we were travelling to America.

We also learned about Tyrus Wong, a Chinese immigrant and artist, who was the artist who inspired the artistic style used in the movie Bambi. We studied some of his artwork and made our own watercolor paintings inspired by his style. Then, of course, we had to watch Bambi. 

We read quite a few different immigration stories, past and present, and from all different parts of the globe. We traced their routes in our globe, which was a great way to tie in our earlier unit study on geography.  After reading "All the Way to America: the Story of a Big Italian Family and a Little Shovel," we found a recipe for mustasoles in "Ellis Island and Immigration for Kids: a History with 21 Activities." According to this book, mustasoles were a type of cookie that Italian immigrants would bring on the voyage to American: hard and crunchy at the beginning, but soft and chewy after a long, damp voyage. We decided to make the cookies, and while they tasted delicious, they definitely were very hard to eat. But it sparked a lot of good conversations on why they needed to pack foods that lasted a long time. 

We ate our mustasoles during our poetry tea time. Among many other poems, we read Emma Lazarus's "A New Colossus." We listened to Yo-Yo Ma during our poetry tea time, since we had read a book about him earlier.