Back when we were doing our state studies we did a small Casey Jones unit, and it was a lot of fun, but the post is old, the pictures are terrible, and all in all it would be more work to make that post look nice than to make a new one, besides which it gave me a perfectly valid excuse to watch the Disney Casey Jones cartoon again.
Casey Jones unit supplies {some affiliate links}
Casey Jones, American Legends
Casey Jones Unit
Much like last time our Casey Jones unit was both reading the books and watching the movie. This time I’ve added in a few other bit (hey my kids are older now). So, there’s more writing, and a bit more thinking.
Again we compare the Casey Jones book to the movie, and I still love that movie, it makes me laugh. It made me even happier when I found out the vocalist is the same person who did the March Hare in Alice in Wonderland.
But, we added in reading “Casey Jones’s Fireman,” and I think I like this book even more than the first book we read. I love books with a touch of the fantastic, and it reminded me of a book we read for our Virginia studies, Sparks Fly High, and another one for Arkansas, Rosie’s Fiddle. All three of these books feature a character being tempted by a devil figure. These types of stories were wildly popular in the mid-1800s, and pop up every now and then in stories still. I find them fascinating.
Well, for this book I thought it’d be fun to add a fantastical element to a story that happened to us. I’m quite eager to see how their stories turn out on this one. I’ll try to post the update when it happens.
And my final book I added in this time?
“I Dream of Trains,” it’s a great story about a boy who dreams of a better future because of Casey Jones and Sim Webb. Sim Webb gave a lot of young black men hope for a better future. Here was an Irish engineer treating Sim as an equal in a day where that didn’t happen.
Well this is a rare post, I’m all out of what I want to say, and I’m under 400 words. Go figure.
Get your Casey Jones Unit here.
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The Casey Jones movie is a lot of fun – haven’t watched it in a while though…
I haven’t either, and I look forward to rewatching it, because it’s so much fun.
I’ve never seen that movie. Maybe I’ll watch it with the kids, sometime.
What a great mini-unit! My son was REALLY into trains for a long time. We read many of these books then. He is more into ships and particularly airplanes right now.