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Practice Book Unit 1 Family Times 1

Boom TownThe discovery of gold in California brought new settlers with dreams of striking it rich. Some prospectors brought their families and everything they owned. The new settlers needed food, clothes, banks, and schools. In one short year, a town would rise where there had been only a field of wildflowers.

ActivityBuild a Boom Town Imagine that your family just sold all of its possessions and hopped on a stagecoach going to California. Together, talk about what you will need when you get there and where you might find those things.

Summary

Realism and FantasyRealistic stories tell about something that could happen. A fantasy is a story about something that could never happen.

ActivityWhat Happened Today? Ask family members to tell you about things that happened to them today. Ask them to tell things that really did happen and some things that could never happen. Guess which happened and which did not and explain how you could tell.

Comprehension Skill

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Practice Tested Spelling Words

2 Family Times Practice Book Unit 1

Words to KnowKnowing the meanings of these words is important to reading Boom Town. Practice using these words to learn their meanings.

Vocabulary Wordsboom a time of fast growth

business the work one does to make money

coins pieces of metal used as money

fetched to have gone after and brought back something

laundry place where clothes are washed and ironed

mending fixing; repairing

pick a pointed tool used to break rocks and loosen dirt

skillet a shallow pan with a handle, used for frying

spell a period of time

Lesson Vocabulary

SentencesA complete sentence tells a complete idea, begins with a capital letter, and ends with an end mark.

Sentence: The dogs run across the grass. They bark happily.

Not a Sentence: chewing on a bone playing on the grass

Activity

Making Sentences Players take turns offering a sentence or a part of a sentence. The other players say “sentence” if the sentence is complete. If the phrase is not a sentence, they offer ways to make it a complete sentence.

Not a Sentence Sentence

are beautiful

ten blue balloons

jumping up and

down

Flowers are beautiful.

Ten blue balloons rise.

Crazy kangaroos are

jumping up and down.

Grammar

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