Homer Price

We are currently working on a Beyond Five in a Row title, Homer Price written by Robert McCloskey and published in 1943.  

My beloved Beyond Five in a Row manual.

Something interesting I noticed was that in the bottom right hand corner of the book was a printed price which says 50 cents.

Our copy of Homer Price.

The book has 6 chapters but they do not need to be read in the order that they appear in the book because each chapter is actually a short story.  We went ahead and started with chapter 1 which is called The Case of the Sensational Scent.  This short story is the story of how Homer and his pet skunk Aroma trap a group of  robbers.  It is a very funny story!

We started off our study by discussing the setting that the story takes place in which was the 1940s.  We compared the prices of a few things now to the price of a few things then.  There is quite a difference.

Homer lived in a small town close to the junction of route 56 and route 56A so we did one of the history and geography lesson from the Beyond Five in a Row manual about the highways and roads of America.  I have honestly never really given too much thought to this before but it was actually a really good lesson.  For example, we read that all of the interstate highways running north and south are numbered with odd numbers and the interstate highways running east and west are numbered with even numbers.  We also talked about the five main categories of roads in the United States which are city streets, county roads,  state highways, U.S. highways, and interstate highways.  We also talked about routes and junctions.  We looked at several maps and identified all of the categories that we talked about.

In the story, a contest was held for creating an advertising slogan for after shave lotion so we discussed the importance of a catchy or memorable slogan to sell products.  We thought of a few that are used today such as McDonald's- I'm lovin' it.  Geico- Fifteen minutes could save you 15 percent or more on car insurance.  KFC- Finger lickin' good.  Burger King- Have it your way.  Taco Bell- Think outside the bun.  I think you get the picture.  Chapter 3 in this book is called "The Donuts" so both of my kiddos decided to write slogans for donuts.  They did such a great job, we had to go out and buy some donuts.

Other topics we will explore before we conclude chapter 1 will be simple machines, the early roots of radio and television, fictional story formats, and headlines-making them true and interesting.