The Tortoise and the Hare

Curriculum Guide
Music, Science, History, Geography, Art, Math &
Language Arts

The Tortoise and the Hare

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 HISTORY CURRICULUM GUIDE

• Ancient Greece has had great influence on the world as we

know it today, from our language, to our architecture, to our
food, and more. Find out more about Ancient Greece at these
websites:

x Ancient Greece - many links to explore: history, crafts,

religion, etc. Explore geography, games, clip art and more at
Mr. Donn's Greece site.

• A myth is another type of traditional story made up to explain

something. While fables usually explain something about
human nature and have a moral, myths attempts to explain a
phenomenon in nature, often using gods as characters. Ancient
Greek myths give us a window into the world of that time
period. Learn more about Greek myths and Greek heroes with
these resources:

• Mr. Donn has a Greek God page with lots of links to follow.

• D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths (amazon.com) is a

wonderful illustrated resource.

• Historians believe that the first Olympic games, athletic

competitions between city-states in ancient Greece, were
played in the 8th century BC, in honor of the Greek god Zeus.
Only male youths were allowed to play and the sole activity
was running in the earliest games. Later the games included
other events such as chariot racing, wrestling, and long jump,
among others. Although interest began growing before the end
of the 19th century, the Modern Olympics began in 1896 and
were played in Athens, Greece. Learn more about the Olympic
games at these websites, and find activities to complete as
well.

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 x Enchanted Learning history (includes locations of modern games
from 1896 to 2016) Host your own Olympics! eHow Olympics
activities for kids; Olympic Games at home. Olympic
printables: a treasure trove of activities, crafts, games and
links; Olympic printables; worksheets and printables for
Winter and Summer Olympics

SCIENCE CURRICULUM GUIDE

The tortoise in the story is a REPTILE, while the hare is a MAMMAL.

What other animals are in the story? Use the resources below to
classify them (organize them into groups).

• Scientists classify, or group, animals based on what

characteristics they have in common. The classification
categories (from most general to most specific) are: Kingdom
(such as Animals or Plants), Phylum (such as
Chordates or Arthropods), Class (such as Mammals or Aves),
Order (such as Marsupials), Family, Genus, Species. The
scientific name of an animal includes its genus and species,
and sometimes subspecies, and is in Latin. Explore the Animal
Kingdom with these fun links, games and lesson plans:

x Here is a clearly presented and fun video from Brain Pop on

Animal Classification x Sheppard Software has many animal
games on their site. Try the animal classification game, and the
food web activity among others.
Here is a chart of the taxonomy of specific animals
Here is a chart with printable cards to cut out and laminate
Here is a great lesson plan on classification
Here is an animal sort game for younger kids

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PHYSICS

• The tortoise and the hare's race seems at first to depend upon
speed, and we assume the hare will win. Let's take a look at
the science of speed and motion:
• Experiments- speed, Spool Racer project, Balloon car
experiment, Measuring boat speed, Measuring wind speed
• Isaac Newton was a 17th century scientist who discovered the
three Laws of Motion, helping us to understand more about
the universe.
• Explore a link here with some games for discovering more
about Newton's Laws of Motion
• Here are three videos of demonstrations to show how these
laws work: First Law; Second Law; Third Law.

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 GEOGRAPHY CURRICULUM GUIDE

Aesop was a Greek fabulist. Where is Greece? Let's find out about
it!

• Learn the facts about the country of Greece with pictures and
facts from National Geographic Kids.
• Plot and label the locations of the most recent 20 Olympic
Games on a world map (listing is here - scroll down)
• Greece is a peninsula in the Mediterranean Sea. Learn what a
peninsula is in this online glossary of geographical terms.
What other countries are peninsulas (look at this world map)?
Which of our United States is a peninsula?
• Print out this map of Greece. Use an atlas you have at home
and label the major cities and geographical features that
stand out.
• Watch these videos, complete with Greek music, of scenes
from Greece- architecture, food, landscape, people, etc.
Zorba the Greek and traditional Greek music.
• Make a model of the Parthenon with cardboard, clay, or other
material from around your home.
Make a Greek meal with your family. Find hundreds of
recipes, from appetizers to pastas to desserts, at this website.

LANGUAGE ARTS CURRICULUM GUIDE

Parts of speech: Adjectives and Adverbs

• An adjective is a word that describes a noun or pronoun.

There are many adjectives in The Tortoise and the Hare.

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 Adjectives: long, proud, powerful, fast, speedy, professional,
eager, swollen, tiny, remarkable, small, swift, terrible,
embarrassed, speechless, slow, flashy, short, sore,
respectable, cool, famous, red, white, French, delicious,
every, steady, kind, spectacular, silly, old, wide, lovely,
magnificent, orange.
• An adverb is a word that describes a verb, an adjective or
another adverb. You can find many adverbs in the story as
well.
• Adverbs: fast, very, exceedingly, modestly, slowly, first,
finally, really, suddenly, calmly, barely, fortunately, probably,
meanwhile, optimistically, most, almost, too, early, shortly,
soon.

GAMES

• Activities and games about adjectives and adverbs: Adjective

and Adverb game, a Who Wants to be a Millionaire-type
game.
• Many grammar games including multiple games for adjectives
and adverbs.
• Pick It Adverb and Adjective games (with tutorials).
• Grammar Blast game
• Fun books about adjectives and adverbs: Hairy, Scary,
Ordinary- What is an Adjective?, Quirky, Jerky, Extra Perky-
More about Adjectives, Up, Up, and Away- A Book About
Adverbs, Lazily, Crazily, Just a Bit Nasally- More about
Adverbs

What's a thesaurus?
• A thesaurus is used to find synonyms, or words that have the
same, or almost the same, meaning.
• Use a thesaurus to look up some of the above adjectives and
adverbs and find similar words.
• Take a paragraph from a favorite book and replace as many
words as you can using the thesaurus.

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ACTIVITY

• Play the word game "Add it": Write a very simple skeletal
sentence, such as "The bear ate the fish." Then take turns
adding one or two words to the sentence to make it more
interesting. The only rules are that each time you add to the
sentence, the result must be a complete sentence; and there
can be no more than 3 adjectives or adverbs describing any
one thing. Example: The brown bear ate the fish. The brown
bear hungrily ate the fish. The brown bear hungrily ate the
squirming fish. Last night the brown bear hungrily ate the
squirming fish. Etc. Keep playing until you can no longer add
to the sentence. These can get really funny!

Poetry on Animals
• Write an animal cinquain!
• A cinquain is a five line poem with a very specific structure.
Visit this site for a lesson plan on writing a cinquain.

The Greek Alphabet

• We get many of our English words from Greek (words such as
"acrobat", "choir", "democracy", "gigantic", and even "fable")
and also use Greek alphabet symbols in math. (The symbol
"π", or "pi", used in formulas for the circumference and area
of a circle is one of the Greek letters of the alphabet).
• Here is the Greek alphabet with their sounds.
• Study some of these Latin and Greek word roots, found at
Fact Monster (scroll down past the Latin). You may be
surprised at how many of our words come from Greek!
• Here are "flashcards" of Greek word roots to practice and
Greek alphabet practice pages.

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• Other activities and ways to help kids learn word roots can be
found at this website.

What is a Fable?
• A fable is a morality story, often with animal characters that
take on human characteristics, personality traits, and flaws.
"Aesop's Fables" is a collection of stories from the 5th century
BC which originated in Greece. There is some disagreement
about who wrote them. Some say it was a Greek slave named
Aesop, others say he didn't exist and that the fables were
written by numerous others of the time period. But regardless
of who wrote them, Aesop's Fables have been around for a
long time, highlighting lessons and morals for all of us.
• Here is a collection of Aesop's Fables from an art school.
Students over the years have illustrated the stories in
wonderful ways! Explore the stories and find one whose
illustrations you really like. Describe the artwork.
• Choose a fable to illustrate yourself and display the art in
your home.
• Write your own fable! Make sure you include a lesson for
readers to learn from the actions of your characters!
• The book "Lousy, Rotten, Stinkin' Grapes" (amazon.com) is a
humorous, and wonderfully-illustrated retelling of the fable of
the fox and the grapes by Aesop.
• Here are some more illustrated versions of Aesop's fables:
"The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg", "Doctor Coyote" A
Native American Aesop's Fables, "Aesop's Fables" by Jerry
Pinkney, Coloring pages of Aesop's fables

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• Preschool plans
• Jakata Tales are Buddhist fables from the period 300 BC to
400 AD. Explore some of these here.
• Joe Harris collected and retold dozens of African American
stories from post-Civil War culture. They became known as

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 Uncle Remus stories. Here are the stories in their original
dialect.
Rent the movie "Song of the South", a Disney retelling of
some of the Uncle Remus stories.

ART CURRICULUM GUIDE

• Make a family of adorable bottle-top turtles (or tortoises) out

of inexpensive materials you probably already have at home
and construct a habitat for them using paper, crayons, tape
and scissors.
• Check out Deep Space Sparkle for art projects. Many of the
lessons are free, and some are for purchase. It is a well-laid
out site with many ideas to explore! Here is a link to some
animal art projects at Deep Space Sparkle.
• How to Draw Animals: How to Draw it and a list of drawing
books (amazon.com).
• Make a placemat collage of animals. Use old magazines (you
can get these from used book stores; National Geographic is
perfect for this), scissors, glue or modpodge (from your local
craft store), and poster board or cardstock. Cut and paste
pictures or words of animals all over the paper, overlap so
there is no blank space, and paint the entire finished collage
with modpodge. Once dry, laminate the project (this home
laminator is wonderful and well worth the modest price) and
use on your kitchen table!

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 MUSIC CURRICULUM GUIDE

The Instruments of the Orchestra

• The contrabassoon is the lowest instrument in the woodwind

family. It is a double reed instrument, which means that the
vibrating part is made of two joined cane reeds.
• You can make a double reed instrument with a drinking straw
or two. Check out this video for instructions. You will need
nothing more than straws, a hole punch, and a pair of
scissors. (PreK+)
These books teach about the instruments of the orchestra in
fun ways: Meet the Orchestra, The Story of the Orchestra,
The Amazing Musical Instruments
• Here are some websites that teach about instruments:
Instrument Lab, NY Philharmonic, SF Symphony.

Beats and Time Signatures

• Most music is written with a steady pulse, or beat, that can be

felt and heard. The beat is then grouped into measures- some
beats strong, some weak- which gives the music an organized
and predictable feel. The way the beats are grouped, and
which note is used for the beat, together form the "time
signature". In the book with your CD you can see an example
of a time signature on page 7.
• Listen to Sousa's Semper Fidelis march and notice the obvious
"1-2-1-2-1-2" feel of the music. Music with 2 or 4 beats per
measure is in "duple meter",

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• A waltz, such as this one by Strauss, is in "triple meter" and
you can clearly sense the "1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3" (even more so
if you try to dance to it!)
• This song by Mozart, "Ave Verum Corpus" has 4 slow beats
per measure and the quarter note gets a beat. This time (4/4
time) is called "common time" and is sometimes marked in
music with just a ‘C'.
• Here are some more in depth lesson plans on: meter, time
signatures.
Sometimes music has a non-traditional structure and the
measures do not all have the same amount of beats, and/or
have changing accents. This is called "mixed meter". There
might be a measure with 3 beats followed by a measure with
4 beats and then one with 2. The song "America" from the
musical West Side Story alternates the time signatures 6/8 (a
quick 1-2-3-4-5-6) and 3/4 (3 slightly slower beats). Listen to
it here and see if you can count it!

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MATH CURRICULUM GUIDE

Speed and distance problems

• Speed machines worksheet (with answers!)

• Speed challenge race worksheet with activity, graphing
and questions.
• Average Speed word problems.

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