Truman's Aunt Farm

Written by Jama Kim Rattigan and Illustrated by G. Brian Karas

Key Scriptures:
1 Timothy 5:8 (ICB) A believer should take care of his own relatives, especially his own family.
Acts 20-23 - The story of how Paul's nephew is used by God to help rescue him.

We had SO much fun with this book as we were able to make some really wonderful tie-ins with our own family! When I first read through Truman's Aunt Farm I was struck with the similarities between Truman's Aunt Fran and our kids' Aunt Donna and the special relationship between them. Since the kids really enjoyed their Aunt Donna reading to them, I sent the book ahead of time to my sister and had make a recording of herself reading it. As reading together is one of their favorite activities, it brought back some very warm memories! It also provided a wonderful reason for the children to write thank-you notes to her, just as Truman did to Aunt Fran. It was very special to see how both kids (but Justin especially) remembered elements of the letters Truman wrote to Aunt Fran (some of the more humorous aspects) and incorporated them into the letters they dictated to me. Here is Justin's letter.

After we got the letters written, we had a perfect opportunity to discuss how we address envelopes and the value of stamps. We did an exercise regarding different ways that we could pay for a 33 cent stamp to mail the letter. Although at the time we did the exercise, it was pretty-much over their heads, it was a great opportunity to introduce some basic money skills which we later reviewed when we did more with money later in the school year.

They both really got into the idea of homonyms and how they were used in this and other books to create humor. Since we did this unit, they have both become much more aware of plays on words and have become much more interested in jokes and riddles - many of them based on word-play.

Throughout our time with this book, we looked at various information about ants and learned some basics of their anatomy. We made some pictures of ants using construction paper and chenille stems (for legs and antennae). One morning Claire was reading in her Children's Topical Bible and came across a selection that featured Solomon's comments about ants and their diligence from the book of Proverbs. She very excitedly made the connection and wanted to share it with us all.

We made an extensive list of activities that the aunts did based upon both the text and the illustrations. We saw which of these items were specifically part of Truman's schedule for the aunts. We took a day and did some experimenting with using a schedule (not particularly successful - we use much more of a routine than a schedule) and did some organizing.

We also had a couple of special surprises for the kids to go along with this book. We had been planning to get roller skates for them and this book provided a perfect opportunity to give them to the kids. I took them outside to the picnic table and had them examine and open the box in much the way Truman did. They were very excited to find the skates and both have made great improvement in their skating skills since! We had also scheduled this book so that Claire's birthday fell within our time with the book. Ever since seeing A Bug's Life (which of course features ants) several months before, she had been very interested in seeing the movie again, so part of her birthday gift was the movie. The 2nd DVD in the set had some really interesting information about how the film was created, including how they were able to get an ant's perspective of grass, leaves, birds, cracks in the grounds, etc. using a very tiny camera. This was really fascinating.

We also spent a good deal of time discussing how Truman took good care of the aunts and how we are to take care of those around us, especially our families and those of the family of faith. We looked at several passages that emphasized God's care for us, and also discussed the story of how God used Paul's nephew to prevent his death.