On Thursday, I read The Legend of the Petoskey Stone to Val's class and my class (known as the mighty sweet K-Buddy group). I have found that most children really love this series of books. Others include The Legend of the Loon, The Legend of Sleeping Bear, The Legend of Mackinac Island, and others. These books create a beautiful picture of our home state, and they are a nice way to teach legends. Legends are stories created to help "explain" some sort of phenomenon and to tell something about nature. In the case of the story I shared this week, Petosegay was the child of a French fur trader and an Ottawa princess. His parents named him Petosegay because it means "rays of sun" or "sunbeams of promise" - and one can see the rays of sun in the beautiful surface of the petoskey stone.
After we read The Legend of the Petoskey Stone, I taught everyone how to polish one. It is a three-step process - using rough sand paper, fine sand paper, and polishing powder. Each child got to take their own beautifully polished stone home, so they can remember the legend and to inspire them to find a few of their own on their next trip to Lake Michigan!
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| Clementine and Lilith work together to shine their stones. |
1 comment:
A wonderful story and something to have always to remember. Awesome.
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