We’ll Race You, HENRY – A Story about Henry Ford is a great Lower Grammar book about Henry Ford which Nathan really enjoyed listening to during our study of the Progressive Era the last few weeks.  This book introduces Henry as a young boy growing up on the family farm with a desire to find a better way of doing things to make his chores easier and follows him through his move to Detroit at the age of 16.  His curiosity on the family farm and the many jobs he held while working in Detroit eventually led to his creation of the first automobile and finally to the creation of the Ford Motor Company.  Here are a few things we found of particular interest:

1.  The first Model T came with a black book titled “How To Repair Your Model T” which stated “any farm boy could do it after milking.” 
2.  In 1911, one Model T was produced every 24 seconds.
3.  The Ford Motor Company went from producing 10,000 cars a year around 1911 to producing over a quarter million cars per year by 1914.
4.  To make car assembly easier for his employees, Henry created a “moving chain that dropped off a specific car part to each worker” the outcome of which was the beginning of assembly line manufacturing in America.  

True to the “enhancing and reinforcing” goal of our co-op, guess what this past Monday’s activity was?  If you guessed creating cars on an assembly line, you’re right!  I didn’t get any pictures of the kids in the assembly line, but here’s a photo of a line of Model T cars which just rolled off one of the elementary kids’ assembly lines!

Nathan reported to me that his job on the assembly line was to attach the front bumper.  When one of the other “workers quit his job,” Nathan reports that he had to pick up the slack by taking over attaching the candy bar at the back of the car as well.  Evidently, they decided it was easiest for him to take on the extra work since both jobs used the same type of part.

WOW!  He learned a lot of real life lessons during this assembly line activity –  getting along with co-workers, efficiency, productivity, picking up another’s slack, etc., etc.  He LOVED this activity! 

Before performing this activity, the kids also watched a short You Tube video on Henry Ford which I’ve linked incase you want to take a look.  They also discussed World War 1, but I’m only blogging about the Henry Ford activity today.

Many thanks to our Elementary History team (Rochelle, Aime, Deanna, and Stacey) for thinking up such a fun activity.