Warm as Wool

Written by Scott Russell Sanders and Illustrated by Helen Cogancherry

Key Scripture:
Proverbs 31:10-31 - particularly 30 & 31(NIV) "Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. Give her the reward she has earned, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate."

This heart-warming book is the fictionalized story of a real pioneer woman (Betsy Ward) who demonstrated many of the qualities of the Excellent Wife as described in Proverbs 31. Her forethought, planning, hard work and perseverance enable her to provide warm woolen clothing for her family on the Ohio prairie after the family move from Connecticut in the very early 1800's. One of our most meaningful lessons for this book was to read through the description given in Proverbs 31:10-31 and see how Betsy Ward demonstrated those qualities.

We also had another special connection with this book, as our very own Uncle Don & Aunt Amy live in Portage County, OH where this book took place. As they had visited us just a few weeks before it was an especially nice tie-in. In addition to locating Portage County, OH on the map, we also traced the route the Ward family most likely followed from Connecticut.

We learned quite a bit of vocabulary related to sheep and the process of converting raw wool into finished garments. Not only did the book itself introduce us to many of these terms, we also enjoyed the Sheep USA and Kid's Farm web-sites that provided games and activities and audio clips related to sheep. As Claire and Justin had been lambs in the children's Christmas production at church, this was especially fun for them.

The kids also really enjoyed learning about how the artist used cool and warm colors on different pages to really give a feeling of chill or warmth as was appropriate with the text for that page. Justin in particular brought this up over and over again as we would re-read the book.

Claire said in her journal entry for this book that the applied math activities were her favorite. As suggested in the FIAR manual, we did addition and subtraction problems to go along with the addition and subtraction of sheep in Betsy's flock throughout the story. We also did a similar activity with a supplemental book that we used, Aurora Means Dawn (also by Scott Russell Sanders and set in OH in the early 1800's).

Click here to see Claire's illustration of the sheep to clothing process and her journal entry or here to see the children in their lamb costumes.