Awesome American History 1901-1911

This was actually two weeks.  The first covered oil, Teddy Roosevelt, and the Wright brothers; and the second covered the San Francisco Earthquake, Typhoid Mary, and the Panama Canal.  All together it was pages 195-214 in The American Story by Jennifer Armstrong.

For the first week we did paper airplanes as both our art and active activities.  Making them was art, and then we threw them from the carport and tried to get them as far up the driveway as we could.

Our snack was lava cake (for the oil discovery, the pockets of gooey chocolate were like striking oil).

Did I take pictures. Nope.  Completely forgot.

The next week I did better though!

We made sugar cube houses on a truly large bed of jello, then patted the jello to make earthquakes.

Cover the jello with plastic wrap if you want to use it for your snack!

This was very cool because you can see the waves passing through the jello.

We started with each kid making a separate 3 cube house, and then they wanted to make one giant building.  Very fun, and tasty, so this was art and snack.

For our active activity, we used Glo-Germ to simulate Typhoid Mary.

This is a lotion that fluoresces under UV light, so you need both the Glo-Germ and the light.

The idea is that you put it on your hand and then, as you shake hands and touch things, you can see where the "germs" spread.




I was the primary carrier, but the "germs" got spread by handshakes.  We were able to show them how I had spread it to them, but also by objects by touching the doorknob, light switch, and faucet handles when I went to wash my hands.

For extra bonus education, I first just did a quick wash/rinse of my hands so they could see you need a good soapy wash to get rid of the germs.

By the end, everyone was very good at washing their hands!