history

Studying France: Building the Eiffel Tower

January 23, 2015 by Amy Leave a Comment

What do you think of when you think of Paris? For me, it’s the Eiffel Tower. There are many historic, exciting landmarks in this beautiful city, but the Eiffel Tower has to be one of the most iconic, and so we had to build our own version during our study of France.

We used sugar wafer cookies. I bought two big packages of chocolate ones and a smaller package of vanilla, and we arranged ourselves into teams. I set a timer for 30 minutes, and with a fair share of cookies each, we attempted to make our towers.

This is a very simple project, but it can have great educational lessons. We studied the shape, construction, and history of the tower, and those lessons came out during this activity. Then, when the time came, we used peanut butter as glue to hold the cookies together. Just plan out how you want to stack the cookies to get your chosen shape, and carefully spread peanut butter where the joint will be.

This project just lit My Big Helper up. She was all over it! We had spent the day learning about the Eiffel Tower, and she excitedly tried to be true to the actual structure – counting landings, legs, etc, to make a recognizable representation. She even reported that she knew why I chose these cookies: because they already had a cross-hatch design stamped on them that resembled the lacy ironwork of the actual tower!

My Big Helper’s finished tower looked like this. She is VERY proud of her tower! Although … she won’t mind eating it, either.

Studying the Eiffel Tower? Check out these great resources!

Studying NC Culture: The Hillsborough BBQ Company

January 14, 2015 by Amy Leave a Comment

This year we’re studying North Carolina, and it’s impossible to study the culture of this Southern state without looking at the tradition of barbeque. Smoking meat is a big deal here, but it’s changing with the convenience of gas heat for cooking – and that’s why we went old school and visited The Hillsborough BBQ Company to get the real thing.

The Hillsborough BBQ Company has a hole-in-the-wall appearance and is set off the main streets of town, but don’t let it’s facade fool you. Their food is worth driving a bit farther for – and it’s no secret. Everything in the restaurant except two items are made completely on site – from the salad dressings to the desserts. It’s not just the meat that they take seriously – it’s every part of their menu.

The owner gave us a tour. After admiring the huge pile of hickory piled out back, we headed to the pit. The wood burned on the right, and the coals were spread under the meat – turkey breasts, ribs, brisket, chicken, and pork. The meat is smoked until it’s 75% cooked, and then it’s double-wrapped in foil to be finished in the oven when you order. This way your food is always freshly finished prepared just for you.

When you place an order, a ‘que call goes out. Here the pitmaster removes the fat from the pork and chops it.

Does that look good or what?

We couldn’t decide what to order, so we ordered a multi-meat plate and a sandwich and shared the whole thing. We were so excited that I forgot to take a picture when our food first arrived, but here’s how our food looked after we split it up. Awesome, isn’t it?

The food at The Hillsborough BBQ Company is amazing. The aroma alone will grab you from the parking lot and draw you in, and you’ll definitely want to come back for more. We couldn’t wait – we headed back the following week for a family dinner.

Hillsborough BBQ is a new family favorite. If you’re looking for some traditional Southern barbecue, this is the place to go.

How do you like your ‘que?

Field Work Friday – A Pirate’s Life for Me

October 10, 2014 by Amy Leave a Comment

One of the best things about homeschooling is being able to be super creative with our studies, and we’re really doing that with North Carolina history. We started out this school year with a study of pirates and the Carolina coast, where Blackbeard once lived.

Our study culminated in a pirate’s party with lots of friends. Each child researched a pirate and then dressed up as that pirate to attend the party.

My Big Helper chose to be Rachel Wall, a woman from Carlisle, PA, who later became the only woman to be hanged in Massachusetts.

My Little Man chose to be Black Bart, who is known for refusing to commit murder on Sundays.

Costumes are a big deal for these events, and my two created their own. We shopped for a few pieces, like the Big Helper’s boots and the cutlasses, but they sewed the rest. My Little Man’s red vest was originally a long-sleeved polo, which we cut and he added buttons. MyBig Helper created her skirt out of a cast-off t-shirt and changed the neckline on an old blouse to make it workable. She cut strips of fabric for belts and sewed a pocket to keep her gold in. They each learned some sewing skills from this project.

When we first arrived, everyone had to explore the amazing pirate ship that our hosts had created out of a trailer, some stored antiques, and cardboard. It was wonderful! With anchors, sails, a cannon, a plank, and even barrels, it was perfect for role-playing, and pirates of all ages got into it.

The kids’ first activity was to sign the Articles of Accord. These articles established the government and punishments on board the ship, and each crew member had to sign upon being chosen to join. With such a big group of people and a wild topic, we started out the day with our own Articles to establish expected behavior.

Next they had to build their ships. The four oldest kids became our pirate captains, and they chose their crews from among the younger kids. Then we showed them pictures of ships that were used by pirates, and each captain chose a ship based on their desired style. Armed with refrigerator boxes, extra cardboard, markers, paint, and the like, each crew then had to construct their style of ship. The teens did an amazing job of directing and protecting their young crew members, and we had some really neat ships to play with when finished.

Another activity was making compasses. The mom in charge of this one brought needles, small discs, and a magnet. Each person magnetized their needle, and then placed it in the disc, and then put the disc in a dish of water. It was a great science lesson!

Although nobody knows for sure if any pirates actually hid their treasures, we couldn’t have a pirate party without a treasure hunt! These three pirates were excited to find hidden gold.

Weapons were a big deal during the Golden Age of Piracy, and luckily for us, our host dad knows his way around them. He brought this muzzle loader, which operates on similar principles to some of the weapons of the day, and demonstrated how it worked. Then, loaded only with wadding, he loaded the gun and let each interested pirate have a shot.

While the pirates waited for their turn to shoot, other pirates engaged in hand-to-hand combat here on the plank. For real pirates back in the day, keeping their balance on a moving ship on the rolling seas amidst smoke and destruction, and so games like this would have been held to determine who would join the crew. Our pirates certainly enjoyed this chance to put their swordsmanship skills to the test!

That awesome dad didn’t stop there, though. With a potato gun painted black and set up cannon-style, he taught the kids how to load, fire, and aim it. Physics outside under a beautiful blue sky! Class couldn’t get any better than this.

After lunch and some playtime, our day of piratical fun ended. We literally had a blast and learned so many things – from teamwork skills to science lessons to hands-on historical fun.

How do you get down and dirty with school lessons?

This post was shared at:

I Can Teach My Child

Book Club, Boys’ Edition: “The Mystery of Blackbeard the Pirate”

September 12, 2014 by Amy Leave a Comment

We’re studying pirates right now, so The Mystery of Blackbeard the Pirate (Real Kids, Real Places) (Real Kids! Real Places! (Paperback))‘>Blackbeard book club ended – but we’re looking forward to more piratical adventures in the weeks to come.

Would you enjoy a pirate-themed book club event?

On the hunt for some other great pirate resources? Check these out:

Book Club, Girls’ Edition: “Mystery on Skull Island”

September 5, 2014 by Amy 1 Comment

Our family is studying pirates right now, so for book club the girls read “Mystery on Skull Island,” an American Girl History Mystery book. It takes place in Charles Town, South Carolina, in the 1720s, just after pirates went from being popular to scary. We learned a lot about colonial life from this story and decided to interact with that in our book club party.

We started, of course, by summarizing the book and discussing it. We all decided that pirates were really not fun people and that the girls in the story didn’t always make the best choices, though they did have good intentions.

Then we made mob caps. Mob caps were ruffled hats that covered a girl’s head and were very common during colonial times. Ours were not true to history, as we made them out of white t-shirts, but since that knit fabric doesn’t fray, this simplified the process greatly. We cut large circles out of old white shirts and then used a large running stitch to sew about an inch in from the edge. Each girl then gathered the cap and we tied off the thread. They were excited to wear their new caps and each chose to do so a bit differently.

The girls love to bake, too, so we made Grandma’s Biscuits. They worked together well, as always, and ate the finished product with honey and jellies.

After developing their own pirate names and designing their own necklaces out of string and plastic beads, it was time for the girls to head home. We had a great time in the colonial era!

What are your kids reading right now? How can you connect with it?

* This post was shared at: Home to 4 Kiddos

Book Club, Boys’ Edition: “The Door to Time”

August 21, 2014 by Amy Leave a Comment

In June our boys were prepped for adventure with the Italian Ulysses Moore Series, the first of which is called The Door to Time.

In this story thee teens attempt to solve mysteries related to an ancient door found in their new house. Set in a seaside town in England, they are active, funny, and always faced with a new challenge.

We started out building boats. At one point in the story the teens find an old sailing ship and need to take it on a journey. My Little Man helped us get ready by filling up the wading pool while his friends worked on their boats.

Everyone had very different ideas!

We put the boats in the pool to see if they would float, and all of them did. Next we had a ‘race,’ and the boat on the left won. His strategy of creating the longest boat worked, and it touched the far side of the pool first.

At one point in the story the kids ride their bikes down a big hill into town – and then have to ride them back up again. Two of them are very athletic and able to ride the hill without difficulty, but the third has trouble. We decided to try riding up the biggest hill we could find – my side yard. Two of the boys chose to start back on the flat ground and get a head start, while the guy in blue chose to start at the starting line – right on the hill. Nobody was able to ride all the way up, but several of them got pretty close! We decided that you must need very strong legs to propel a bike up a big hill.

A Door to Time made a great book club choice for our boys. They talked more about this book than they have any other, and they even asked – on their own! – to read the next book in the series.

That definitely makes A Door to Time a winner in my book.

What are your kids reading this summer?

Write Your Own Irish Blessings

July 19, 2014 by Amy 5 Comments

Okay, I realize that if you write them yourself, they won’t really be Irish (unless you are) but this is a fun introduction to poetry and a way to think about others while studying a neat aspect of Irish culture.

We began by reading some traditional Irish blessings. We found a bunch over here. Of course, we had to read my favorite:

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Then we set to work. We always send ‘Happy Saint Patrick’s Day’ cards to our relatives, so we broke out the white and green paper, the rubber stamps and ink pads, and some stickers. I let the kids create their cards however they wanted, as long as they wrote a message inside. My Big Helper’s had to contain some kind of blessing.

At first she wanted to copy blessings from the website, but we continued to talk about the format. The neat thing about many Irish blessings, practically speaking, is that they follow a simple pattern. “May you” followed by a good thing. Soon she wanted to write her own.

My Big Helper got creative with this. She really had fun with this assignment, and I think each card will bring a smile when it’s opened.

Write Your Own Irish Blessing @ www.anestintherocks.blogspot.com

Have you ever ‘studied’ Irish blessings? What would you include in one?

Shared at:

A Little R & R

Life as a Pilgrim: Fun & Games

July 19, 2014 by Amy

This month our Book Club girls read Ron Roy’s The Mayflower Treasure Hunt. I was pleasantly surprised by this book – the descriptions of the Mayflower are historically accurate, the initial movement of the Pilgrims are tracked throughout the Cape Cod area, and the modern Plymouth is well depicted. I love the way that Roy added a believable mystery into the Pilgrim story, making it easy to tell which parts are fiction and which are true while still maintaining a fun and exciting story.

I had lots of events planned for this club meeting and was very excited – and then it became possible for us to travel to a local park for a “Pilgrims at Play” program, where they promised to teach about the fun side of Pilgrim life. This seemed like the perfect place to meet about this book!

Several of the girls traveled with my family, and they talked a bit about the book on our way to and from the park. They also learned quite a bit more about Pilgrim life while there.

The program began as Hilary, the presenter, talked about basic Pilgrim facts. As she prepared them to use books to study Pilgrim life, she taught the kids a few phrases in Wampanoag and in Elizabethan English. This was by far my favorite feature of this program. Who would expect to hear Elizabethan English in a small park in North Carolina?

Next, Hilary pulled out tubs of supplies and let the kids play Pilgrim-style. Mine never moved past the ball-and-cup. They were each determined to get the hang of it!

After learning about the foods available to the Pilgrims for their first Great Harvest Celebration, the kids made painted fish impressions. They painted a textured rubber fish and then rubbed it onto plain paper to transfer the colorful image.

After a picnic lunch on the center’s beautiful stone porch and some playtime in the museum, we headed out. Even though the rain had stopped, the girls were too happy to pose under this vibrant umbrella.

Next month we’re looking forward to discussing a good Christmas mystery and spreading some Christmas cheer.

What good books have you read lately?

Life as a Pilgrim: Daily Activities

July 19, 2014 by Amy

This week we got together with friends once again to live life as a Pilgrim. We focused on activities of daily life this time, and began our work by learning about the clothing that the children would wear.

After reading Samuel Eaton’s Day and Sarah Morton’s Day, both by Kate Waters, we grabbed three petticoats and an apron. The girls each put on all of these layers to see what it felt like to wear so much clothing at one time. They were all quite certain that they’d stick to their jeans!

Next, we moved to the table and began to make poppets out of cardboard and fabric. Using the pictures in the books as guides, the kids each dressed their poppets in the clothing worn by the pilgrims then. They cut out clothing from fabric and used yarn as garters to hold up their stockings. They worked for a very long time on this, determined to get each layer just right.

Mine were very excited about their finished product.

Don’t they look great?

By this time we were all quite hungry, so we headed for a Pilgrim lunch in the kitchen. After working together to set the table with plates and spoons, the kids stood by their plates – as children did then – and carefully placed their napkins on their shoulders. They were less than pleased, however, when I put five kernels of corn on their plates. After talking about how sick the Pilgrims were that first winter, about how that may have been due to their lack of nutritious food and disease, about how some days this was just all they had, the kids sadly ate their corn. They were quite upset with me …

so we handed them their journals and let them write. Each child expressed his/her displeasure well through writing. My Little Man used exclamation points for the first time, declaring the corn to be “hard.” Another child stated that if he had been a Pilgrim, he likely would have starved, although he would have eaten the corn since there wasn’t anything else.

When they finished their writing, they cheered as we brought out their ‘real’ lunches, and headed outside happily for a picnic.

Next we learned about Pilgrim furniture. After talking about the difference between beds for adults and beds for kids, they stuffed large burlap bags with straw. Each child took turns laying on it. They finally decided that this whole process was a lot of fun, but that they preferred their own beds to these scratchier ones.

Our last activity of the day was to dip candles. While the Pilgrims bought their candles from England for the first few years, being too focused on survival to have time for candle dipping, we thought this would be a good way to see the work that went into having light during this time period. Besides, someone was dipping candles for the Pilgrims!

The kids really enjoyed this process, although they got most excited about it when their candles began to grow fatter. This took a long time, and when the kids learned that a typical candle has 200 dips, a few were rather discouraged.

I took this picture when we were about halfway through the process and at the time, this was the biggest candle. She was so excited with her finished product that she began a second candle! All of the kids decided that they wouldn’t want to be dependent upon their own candle-making abilities for light – but that this was a fun process, at least for a few minutes.

Next week we’re taking a field trip to learn about the Pilgrims’ journey on the Mayflower and games that the children might have played. Come back to join us!

You can read about our Pilgrim cooking adventure here.

How are you preparing for Thanksgiving?

Life as a Pilgrim: Cooking

July 19, 2014 by Amy

When I was about nine, my grandmother* took me to Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts. It was a cool New England day in the summer, a bit misty and damp, and I’ll never forget how shocked I was as I stood inside those tiny houses, amazed at how dark and smoky and damp they were. I felt sure that the Pilgrims must have been incredibly brave and determined people to purposely live in such difficult conditions.

As a teacher, I feel that we often leave that part out of the Thanksgiving story. Yes, we talk about a rough winter, about Squanto teaching Pilgrims how to plant corn, and then a miraculous, wonderful harvest and a big party to celebrate; but I want to dig deeper into the story. How did they really survive that first winter? Why were the Pilgrims – really called ‘Separatists’ – so very determined to stay in the New World? How difficult was that first winter really, and what was their trip like on the Mayflower, anyway? Basically, what did their everyday lives really look like? What kind of people were they?

As a parent, I want my children to understand about the kind of people who will do anything to obey the calling that God has placed on their hearts – even when it makes no sense to their peers. So this month, we’re studying the real story of the ‘Pilgrims’ – and we’re doing it in a real way.

We’re reading books, studying photographs of my two journeys to Plimoth Plantation, and watching virtual tours- but we’re also getting together with friends to try our hands at some real Pilgrim activities. We began yesterday.

After trekking out to the edge of the forest, we talked about how the Pilgrims brought very little with them – and so they had available to them whatever they could find on the beach or in the forest. With that in mind, the children tackled their first task: cooking.

We spent most of our day working with food – largely because that was one of the most important tasks for the Pilgrims during their first winter in Plimoth. Arriving in December didn’t allow them to build or harvest anything leisurely – they had to hurry to settle in. While they wouldn’t have had an oven to bake bread, they would have needed to find a way to cook, and simple quick breads and fritters were likely.

We gave the kids a batch of homemade play dough and asked them to cook it. You should have seen their faces!

After working for nearly an hour, conferring, scouring the yard for natural ‘supplies, and talking through their plan, they built this spit-like contraption. They broke the dough up into smaller pieces, reasoning that it would ‘bake’ faster this way, and they arranged it on boards and on a spit in the sun. They felt sure that the sun would bake their small pieces of dough.

Next, we handed them a rubber ‘turkey.’ They laughed crazily at this one, but instead of building another spit as I expected, instead they went searching for vines. They found one near the creek and tied the turkey to a tree. Again, they expected the sun to cook their bird.

We had to have a long talk about the strength of the sun during a New England winter.

These Southern children were not impressed. They seemed to prefer a Myrtle beach heat wave to a Massachusetts winter wind. Oh, well. Back to the drawing board!

Next we gave them each a walnut that we had harvested and dried from our backyard walnut tree this summer. Now, this project completely cracked me up. I’ve never seen kids struggle so much with a nut! At a loss as to how to crack it without a nutcracker – which my kids have never seen, anyway – they began throwing the nuts at trees. When that didn’t work – they just lost the nuts that way – they began banging and scraping them against the bark, trying to rub off the shell.

After a seemingly endless amount of time, we asked them to work on another plan, so they found some rocks. They each put their nut on a rock and began banging on the nut with a stick. That didn’t work out so well, either. They did throw large rocks at the nuts, and they cracked that way, but since that was rather dangerous – who really goes around throwing boulders at tiny walnuts? – they started again. They tried everything from jumping on their nuts to making a 3-Pilgrim pile-up on top of a nut, hoping to squish it with their sheer accumulated body weight, but to no avail. Finally, after a few hints towards other objects and reminders that their Pilgrim tummies weren’t filling up this way, they grabbed hand-size rocks and beat the nuts with it.

Rock-hammers work for cracking walnuts. Just so you know.

(It’s a good thing these kids aren’t real Pilgrims, but you gotta hand it to them – they’re seriously determined!)

Next, we moved on to the real cooking. We gave each kid an ear of dried Indian corn and asked them to remove the kernels. That proved to be harder than they expected.

Then, using borrowed mortars and pestles of different materials and sizes, they tried grinding the corn.

Eventually we used a very simple recipe to mix up our own cornbread. My husband had a fire going in the yard, and so we cooked our cornbread outside in a pan over coals. It was difficult to get the temperature right, the smoke burned my eyes as I tried to flip each one, and the kids danced impatiently around the fire as they waited hungrily to eat. Oh, the life of a Pilgrim!

Finally the cornbread – and the simple pumpkin fritters that we’d made and also cooked over the fire – were ready. They kids all liked the cornbread and asked for more. The fritters were a bit less popular. They all decided that cooking like a Pilgrim was hard work.

Back outside, the kids decided to check on their ‘bread’ dough. They decided that it was getting crusty and that perhaps this sun thing was working. We decided that next time we should use real dough instead of play dough that dried out so easily. 😉

Finally, each child settled in with a journal to record his/her thoughts about Pilgrim life and food. Each child decided that being a Pilgrim was quite difficult – and one was quite certain that he didn’t want to give up his McDonalds’ drive-through or KFC. They each seemed to feel that our lives today are much simpler – at least where basic survival is concerned – than that of the Pilgrims. My Big Helper had so much to say that she began another book – complete, as my Little Man exclaimed, with “a Table of Continents.”

In the end, no matter how successful they might be at Pilgrim cooking, they met our goals. They tried hard. They were creative. They thought outside the box, just as the real Pilgrims had to do. They realized that the Pilgrims worked really hard and made do with what they had. They also learned that they have lots to be thankful for.

Mission accomplished.

Shared at I Can Teach My Child.

Come back next week to see our next installment in our ‘Life as a Pilgrim’ series!

*Nana, thanks for taking me to Plimoth all those years ago. It made a huge impression on me – and, by extension, is making one on my kids, as well. 🙂 I appreciate all the work you put into our summer excursions!