In all my research on canal boats I found many wonderful resources! As a lover of children’s books, I found The Erie Canal by Peter Spier to be one of my favorites. Mr. Spier did a fantastic job bringing many different scenes from the canal world to life thought his detailed illustrations. I do not believe that the book is in print any longer, but if you are able to grab a copy from your local library or find a used copy for sale, I highly recommend that you take a look.
When I taught Exploring Ohio Canals to my boys for the very first time, I used this book as our art study and they all loved it. I told each boy to look at the assigned picture for 30-60 seconds and then share with me something important they noticed or their favorite part of the picture. This quick study was a wonderful way to reinforce what the boys had already been learning about canals and it challenged them to consider things about canal life that they hadn’t thought of before.
Another way we chose to use this book was while listening to the song. Believe it or not, we found that the Veggie Tales version on YouTube was one of the best matches to the lyrics in the book. We had so much fun singing as we looked at each page and by the end of the week the boys had almost the entire song memorized.
The Erie Canal by Peter Spier does an amazing job of connection art and music to canal history and I cannot recommend it enough to families looking for a quality canal resource!