It was the era of gangsters, Prohibition, and all that glitters. It’s known as the Roaring ‘20s, and our living history club brought the era back to life. We love holding this special events each semester, and this one was definitely the glitziest.
The day kicked off with a photography session, as the dressed-up students were dressed to the nines as flappers and mobsters. After that, they introduced themselves, as each student had studied a particular person from history and had come dressed as that person.
Next, My Big Helper shared some popular slang of the time and asked the students to incorporate as many of these terms as possible into their conversations throughout the day.
My Little Man explained the history of a Hamilton Beach fruit juicer that was patented during the 1920s. The particular machine in question used to reside in a local pharmacy, and following his speech, he demonstrated how to make the perfect fresh lemonade. While lemonades were made for each student, another mom taught the students how to play table games.
Another mom taught the students about the characteristics of the art deco style. Each student then chose a quote from a celebrity of the era and created their own unique art piece with art deco-inspired fonts and colors.
A dad shared the silent movie A Trip to the Moon. Following the show, the students lined up to feast from a variety of foods popular in this decade. With the advent of refrigerated transportation and the popularity of parties, many new foods came onto the scene, including peanut butter cups, chow mein, Coca-Cola, Crush, cheeseballs, Jell-O parfaits, and tuna wraps.
After lunch, the students returned to the year 2017, concluding that the Roaring ‘20s might be fun to visit, but that they wouldn’t want to live there.
If you’re studying this era, you might also want to check out my post about our book club event for Isabel Feeney, Star Reporter.
Some resources that we loved for studying the ’20s are:
What are your thoughts?