Justin Morgan had a Horse book and a movie

The fun part of my kids getting older I finally get to introduce my kids to my absolute favorite books from childhood, and Justin Morgan had a Horse is one of those books.  It’s also a bit of fun for me as I place it in its historical narrative.  I always like it when a book kills two birds with one stone, and I get a Book and a movie while also getting some history lesson in, SCORE!

The one downside to Justin Morgan had a horse book and a movie night was a distinct lack of good snacks.  If you’ve read Justin Morgan had a Horse what else could I have added?

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Justin Morgan Had a Horse synopsis

In Justin Morgan Had a Horse*, Justin Morgan is a school teacher who is owed money by a farmer, when he goes to collect the farmer doesn’t have the money, but he does have two horses.  So Justin Morgan sets off with the two horses in tow and soon discovers the little horse he discounted as mostly useless is actually quite a good horse.  We follow Figure as he grows up and becomes the fastest, strongest, and all-around best horse in Vermont.  Eventually, he is challenged to a race by two city folk and their fancy racehorses, and Justin Morgan accepts.

It’s a great story, especially since it’s the true story of how the Morgan breed was founded.  I love the simple style of Marguerite Henry and at one point owned almost every single one of her books.

Of course, the Justin Morgan Had a Horse movie* is just a little bit different.

Justin Morgan Had a Horse discussion questions

1. Why is it important to pay your debts?  Why do you think Justin Morgan was so concerned with paying off his debts?
2. Joel is apprenticed to the miller.  How do you think it felt to leave home at his age?  Where might you be apprenticed?
3. Why was Joel wrong to release the dog at the race?
4. Did the owners of the race horse behave honorably in how they set up the race?
5. What would you say this story is about?

Justin Morgan Had a Horse snacks

As I said, there wasn’t super a lot of great ideas on food strictly speaking from the book.  The main food they talk about is apples.  Lots of references to apples.  So we had a few apple inspired snacks.

Hi, Future Ticia 2024 here, and in updating the pictures, I added in a few more snacks that would make sense with this because of the time period and all that.

First, we had apple muffins, which we frequently eat here (the link is to the recipe, bad pictures and all).  Recently I’ve been substituting coconut oil for the vegetable oil the recipe calls for, and that is quite delicious.

Then we had cinnamon sugar baked apples, and that was super popular.  I had thought it would turn out more chip-like, but instead, we got more mushy apples.

Future Ticia 2024 is not in the least bit surprised, if I’d wanted chip-like I should have dehydrated them, not baked them.

There is frequent reference to Little Bub, Justin Morgan’s horse, pulling logs, so we had some pretzel sticks logs to eat.  The kids tried to convince me, they needed to be covered in frosting of some sort, but I wasn’t buying it.

And that’s it.  I think I might have thrown in a bit of cheese or bread, but really there wasn’t super a lot we could pull out for snacks.

Here are the snacks I added in after the fact:

• bread- just like I mentioned and cheese
• fine dining- really I’d throw in some form of tavern fare, because there are some amount of those references
• pumpkin pie, or apple pie- because pie seems right
• I need to reread and see what I would add to go with what we have so far

More great 5th grade ideas

• Clouds Unit
• Alice in Wonderland
• Portalan navigation
• How to make a writer’s notebook
• Age of Exploration Dice Game

By Selena N – originally posted to Flickr as Bay Morgan horse, looking for treats!, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8340423