I picture book I wrote based off of Cynthia Rylant\'s "When I Was Young in the Mountains". This is an activity that can be done at all grade levels both individually and as a class project. Technology and New Literacies may or may not be integrated depending of how the lesson plan dictates.

2. Dedicated to my mom and dad who had the wisdom to gift me
a
childhood in the country.

3. When I was young in the country
Mom would teach us how to
plant the different types of
seeds in the garden. Some
seeds were scattered, some
seeds were placed carefully
one by one.

4. I sometimes used my small
hands to cover the seeds with
soil. Or, sometimes, Mom used
the hoe to pull the dirt over
the carefully planted seeds.

5. When I was young in the country, Aunts and Uncles would spend
Sunday dinner around a table spread with Mom’s homemade
chicken pot pie, Mississippi spinach, buttermilk fried chicken,
and green beans fresh picked from the garden.

6. Afterwards, we would play a game of Michigan Rummy while
the grown-ups enjoyed lemon meringue pie and drank coffee.
We kids ate a bowl of ice cream.

8. When I was young in the country,
Mom and Dad would take us
mushroom hunting in the nearby
woods. We would search for
hours. Dad would teach us
about the different types of
trees in the woods. He liked
the Redbud best. One time, he
dug a small one up and we took
it home and planted it in our
yard.

10. When we got home from mushroom hunting, Mom would fry up
whatever mushrooms we found in butter. Dad and Mom would
offer us some and we would decline. Mom and Dad savored every
bite, though.

11. When I was young in the
country, we spent the summers
harvesting vegetables from the
garden. I would spend evenings
with Mom picking peas and
green beans or plucking
potatoes from their roots as
mom dug the hills.

12. Some of my summer days were spent podding peas or stringing
green beans. When Mom got home from work, she taught me
how to can them. We canned French style and cut green
beans, peas, and corn. Mom taught me how to use hot water to
take the skin off tomatoes before canning them or making
tomato juice. We also canned my favorite—bread and butter
pickles.

13. When I was young in the country, snow would come each winter
and cover the long gravel lane. The wind would howl and blow
snow across the fields leaving huge snow drifts blocking our
path. At times our cars could not get through the deep snow.

14. One time, a man in a backhoe
had to come and dig us out. It
was nice to have country folk
who could help when we
needed it.

15. When I was young in the country,
I laid in my bed at night and
listened to the crickets chirp
and awoke to the sounds of
grasshoppers buzzing.

17. Sometimes, the crickets would get inside my room and I would
chase them around until I captured them in a jar. I would take
them outside and put them in the garden so they could sing their
chirpety-chirp to me when I went to sleep that night.

18. When I was young in the
country, I sat on the porch
swing swaying back and
forth, back and forth.
Sometimes I memorized the
rainbow or colors in the
flower bed that surrounded
me.

20. Maybe, I picked a daisy and played “he loves me, he loves me
not” or maybe I picked a dandelion that had gone into seed
and made wishes for a friend to come to the country and
play with me.

21. Sometimes, I sat on the swing
and watched a storm blow in
late in the evenings. Other
times, I sat and stared off into
the colorful sunsets until the
stars began to twinkle in the
night sky.

23. When I was young in the
country, I always enjoyed the
open spaces, the peaceful
solitude and the rainbow of
nature’s bounty.

24. When I was young in the country, I never thought about the pot of
gold at the end of the rainbow because the rainbow of the
country was enough for me.