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Johnny Tremain book and a movie

August 17, 2015 Ticia 11 Comments

It’s time for another book and a movie! This one will work great for your homeschool history if you’re studying American history. Our Johnny Tremain book club gave me a great excuse to do some more with the American Revolution when we weren’t actually studying it for our history that year.

This will also work great if you’ve got young boys because it’s full of all sorts of great things to talk about with them.  Princess liked this book, but nowhere near as much as the boys did.

Johnny Tremain movie night

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Johnny Tremain synopsis

Johnny Tremain* is a silversmith in Boston in 1775.  He’s given a commission to make a difficult pot, and burns his hand.  As Johnny recovers from the burn and learns from his mistakes, and how to rebuild his life, he is swept up into the events leading up to the Revolutionary War.

Johnny Tremain Activities

This particular book and a movie are what led us to outlaw acting out parts of the story for a while because they were just over the top in their “inspiration,” and we had to have a rather long talk afterward.

Johnny Tremain projects Boston Tea Party

Superman recreated a scene from the movie using peg dolls and various craft supplies.  I very much appreciated his ingenuity in his project.

Johnny Tremain projects peg dolls

Princess made peg dolls also, but she concentrated on the fashion of the time.  Since she is fairly young I was okay with her just drawing from her memory of coloring books she’s seen, but in a few years, I’m going to require some research for a project like that.

Johnny Tremain projects Minecraft

Batman was inspired by Angellic Scalliwags’ projects and built a “Johnny Tremain Minecraft world,” but since our version of Minecraft is rather heavily modded, I’d have to say his inspiration was only loosely inspired by the book.  I’ll just say there was a roller coaster and leave it at that.

Johnny Tremain snacks

Johnny Tremain book club snacks

Since there’s not a lot of food, and I wasn’t particularly wanting to take the boys’ suggestion of fashioning muskets out of icing and pretzels, the snacks are a little limited.

Future Ticia 2022, I added in a few extra snack ideas to round out the Johnny Tremain book club snacks, and also I think they make sense thematically.

  • Newspapers to go with Johnny’s second career as a newspaper delivery boy.  The newspapers are graham crackers with marshmallow fluff on top.  Then I piped melted chocolate onto them.
  • Bread, because throughout the book Johnny talks about the smell of bread.  I added some cheese fondue to dip it in, because… it’s yummy.
  • Fruit, because Johnny worries he won’t get to eat fruit as often with the blockade.
  • Fruit punch, it’s a minor part of several scenes in the books.  So much so the kids insisted we HAD to have it for our drink.  It’s made with Sprite and orange sherbet
  • musket balls- whoppers
  • chicken- a whole chicken because it was a fairly common food

I will say, the Johnny Tremain movie is fairly close to the book, it’s grossly simplified, but unlike most Disney adaptations it’s fairly true to the materials.  We’ve watched it several times since we first did so.

Johnny Tremain discussion questions

There’s a lot of meat to discuss in this book, and I very much encourage anyone covering the Revolutionary War to have their kids read it because of all the great discussions we had.

  • How did Johnny contribute to his own problems?
  • What faults does Merchant Lyte have?  How do those faults contribute to the story?
  • How is Rab different from Johnny?
  • How does Johnny’s relationship with Cilla change throughout the book?
  • What actions did Johnny take would you find most difficult to do?
Johnny Tremain book and a movie

Possibly Johnny Tremain research projects

There are a lot of great research projects you could set kids to doing with Johnny Tremain.  Here are a few I thought of as I was writing discussion questions:

  • Research historical figures mentioned in the book: Sam Adams and Paul Revere are two prominent characters, there are several others
  • Research the Boston Tea Party or Lexington and Concord
  • Research the Stamp Act, the Intolerable Acts, Boston geography
Johnny Tremain book club

More Johnny Tremain resources

  • Free Johnny Tremain resources
  • Johnny Tremain unit study (this site has dozens of other great studies on it)

More 5th-grade learning ideas

  • Earth Science Unit
  • Black Cauldron book club
  • Circulatory System game
  • Age of Exploration Unit
  • Candlemaking lesson

Check out my book and an activity board for more book-inspired ideas, and watch for more Book and a Movie ideas as we read more books.

Follow Ticia Adventures in Mommydom’s board book and activity on Pinterest.

Johnny Tremain book and a movie feature 5th

“Tea being dumped over the side of the Beaver during the reenactment of the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 2012” by leewrightonflickr is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

history, reading and writing 5th grade, American Revolution, book and a movie, United States history

Comments

  1. Natalie PlanetSmartyPants says

    August 17, 2015 at 2:27 pm

    This looks fun, but I’ve never even heard of the book! Now I am tempted to look it up when they get to that period of US History in school.

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      August 17, 2015 at 8:04 pm

      You should, it’d be an easy read for Smarty.

  2. Almost Unschoolers says

    August 17, 2015 at 4:08 pm

    I think we watched that movie back in my own school days – it looks vaguely familiar with a schoolish feel to it. Your children are becoming very creative – I like their musket snack suggestion 🙂

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      August 17, 2015 at 8:04 pm

      It definitely has the Walt Disney feel to it that goes along with all of the movies when he was alive.

  3. Phyllis says

    August 17, 2015 at 8:17 pm

    You know, surprisingly, my boys did not care for the movie or the book. It was too slow for them. Sigh.

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      August 17, 2015 at 8:40 pm

      Huh, I would have thought it was right up their alley.

  4. claire says

    August 19, 2015 at 2:42 am

    Interesting! Love the creativity and the punch looks delish!

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      August 19, 2015 at 7:43 am

      My kids now look for excuses to make punch, “Well you see Mom this book mentioned this minor thing that could be interpreted as punch.”

  5. maryanne @ mama smiles says

    August 19, 2015 at 11:30 pm

    I really liked this book as a kid!

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      August 20, 2015 at 11:53 pm

      I didn’t read it as a kid, but have vague memories of people talking about it.

  6. Heidi says

    March 17, 2016 at 8:47 am

    My son is reading Johnny Tremain. I love your research project ideas!

    Reply

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Ticia Adventures in Mommydom Hi, I'm Ticia! This is the adventures of my family in life and learning. Follow along with us as we share our adventures. We're having a lot of fun and learning as we go.

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