Awesome Modern History: Inventions and Industrial Revolution

 These were chapters 82 and 83 in  A Child's History of the World.

For our active activity, we got the kids up at 5am and made them do dangerous work for 18 hours. 

Kidding! 

We built marble run "machines."

I set up a board (a large picture frame in this case) propped up at an angle, and put out an assortment of wooden blocks and things to build with.

I also put out the geared marble run in case the younger kids weren't interested in constructing their own machines.
Everyone liked that, but they spent more time (and had more fun) building their own!

For our art activity, Shelli set up cyanotypes.

She had some acetate printouts which the kids could use,


and some black markers to add their own embellishments.

This and other objects were laid on paper treated with  chemicals, and then everything was set in sunlight.

They came out beautifully!

For our snack, we made salt potatoes, a byproduct of the Industrial Age!  They started with Irish salt workers in Syracuse, NY some time in the 1800s. They extracted salt from the waters of a local lake by boiling away the water in large evaporation vats. The workers would slip their potatoes into the evaporation vats to cook and 20 minutes later it was lunch time!