My Big Helper’s book club group headed back in time this month with Felicity Learns a Lesson, the second book in the American Girl’s Felicity series. In this book, Felicity begins taking lessons in etiquette and notices the rumblings of the Revolution’s beginnings around her.
We planned to have a Colonial-type tea party, so after borrowing a tea set, my Big Helper got to work dressing the table.
The book opens with Felicity getting in trouble for climbing onto the roof to get apples to make apple butter, so we decided to make our own – though in a bit more modern way. The girls all seemed to have fun with this. We began by washing and chopping the apples, although they had some issues with my apple chopper. 🙂
While the apples cooked down, we sewed a simple seam up the middle of two sheets of paper to make a copybook.
Then we made our own quill pens and watered down some paint to try them out. The girls decided that it’s much easier to write with a pencil!
When they had issues with the “ink” not drying fast enough, we talked about the practice of sprinkling sand over the paper soak up the extra. I didn’t have sand, so we broke out the salt shaker. My kitchen table is now well preserved. 🙂
By this time, the apples were ready to be squished, so we ran them through the food mill. The girls were great about taking turns and helping each other through this process. After that, we put the sauce into a slow cooker to cook down overnight. We’ll share the fruits of their labors tomorrow.
No party would be complete without pictures of fun costumes.
After watching a clip from the Felicity movie to remind them of their tea party etiquette, the girls began.
Since my Big Helper does not actually like tea, she requested lemonade instead. The girls got a kick out of this.
Since we didn’t need to serve sugar cubes or milk, we decided to offer ice cubes and lemon slices. One creative girl decided to dress her up up a bit.
I think this was their favorite part of the afternoon.
What are your kids reading right now??
