Awesome American History: 1849-1856

 This class covered two weeks (since we missed one due to illness) and it covered Sojourner Truth, the Underground Railroad, clipper ships, redwoods, potato chips, and the discovery of fossils in America.

This is pages 99-119 in The American Story by Jennifer Armstrong.


And again I forgot to get pictures except at the end when the youngest member of the group threatened Choclo with a foam sword (adorably).

Our active activity was hide and seek (for the Underground Railroad).

Our art activity was chipping bones out of plaster (fossils).

Our snack was potato chips and birthday cupcakes.

And that's a wrap for Awesome American History I, you can now view the whole thing in the sidebar!  We'll pick up with Awesome American History II in the fall, when, doubtless, I will carefully photograph the entire class!

Awesome American History: 1846-1848

This was a super fun one, and I completely forgot to get any pictures! Well,  this covered Thoreau, the Donner party, and the Gold Rush, pages 87-98 in The American Story by Jennifer Armstrong.


We built cabins out of Popsicle sticks for Thoreau (for his cabin at Walden Pond),  panned for gold (sieved for fools gold in sand and water) and ate jerky (which the Donner party lacked).

I explained to the kids how to tell the difference between fool's gold and real gold (smash it with a rock: pyrite will shatter, gold will bend), and I let them keep the pieces they found.  The kids wanted to know how much the pyrite (fool's gold) would be worth if it were real, so we weighed it and looked up the answer: if it had all been gold, it would have been about $200,000!

Awesome American History: 1821-1835

 This covered Johnny Appleseed, the Erie Canal, and the Moon Hoax, pages 78-86 in The American Story by Jennifer Armstrong.

If you're not familiar with the Moon Hoax, it was the fake news of 1835. A newspaper wanting to boost circulation began "reprinting" a Scottish science journal detailing the amazing sights a new telescope had found on the moon.

 They had an endless supply of amazing finds, including furry winged people!

For our art activity, we did our own version with plain paper replacing a circle cut out of construction paper. 

Some of the kids did pictures on the front and back of the white paper, so that you could put it up to a window and see more things. 

 For our active activity we went on a bird walk like Audobon (from last week's activities).  We found about a dozen kinds of birds, and had a great time!

For our snack, we went with the song 15 Miles on the Erie Canal.  If you haven't heard the song (I had to sing it in grade school, and we did not sound anything like as good as that link), the chorus mentions that they hauled some lumber, coal, and hay.

So we ate lumber (pretzel logs), coal (chocolate chips), and hay (shredded wheat).   Possibly,all those years of doing gingerbread houses has warped my mind.

Awesome American History: 1812-1820

This covered pages 69-77 in The American Story.  The topics were Uncle Sam, Audubon, and whaling.

The active activity was supposed to be a bird walk (like Audubon), but it was unseasonably cold and windy, so we skipped it.

The art activity was fairly active, though!

We drew whales,ships and islands lightly on paper, then had the kids turn the pages over on carpet and stab them with pencils (trying to ht the "whale").

this is a variant on a game my Dad played as a kid during WWII, except he drew tanks or ships.

At any rate, the kids loved it! 

For our snack, I wanted to do chipped beef, since that was close to what "Uncle" Sam Wilson was selling to the US government, but it was a Friday during Lent, so we went with the all-American apple pie instead.

So this was actually the Friday before Holy Week.  We didn't have class on Good Friday, but we did do two special things: we visited the Basilica for the Memorial of the Lord's Passion,(and were able to venerate their relics of the Passion!), and we did our own Living Stations.

This year, the kids did them completely on their own, and I loved it so much, I took pictures of each one, and I am hoping to print them as a book for our family.

Here is the one of Veronica wiping the face of Jesus:

Awesome American History: 1776-1805

This was two weeks squashed together since we had a family sick the first week.  This covered pages 49-68 in The American Story.  The topics were Founding Fathers East, Revolution, Capitol, George Washington, Bananas, Lewis and Clark.

For our active activity, we had a treasure hunt, put together by Zorg and Leena.  They wrote the clues in the form of letters from Thomas Jefferson to Lewis and Clark.

Brilliant, hilarious, and loads of fun!

The "treasure" was bananas.

Our art activity was Revolutionary War paper soldiers.

This was one of those things that I wildly underestimated.  I had made a dozen photocopies for the kids   to color and cut out.


 They spent two hours (and many trips to the photocopier) making an entire army!

 The original snack was bananas, but since they were spending so much time on the soldiers, I also made johnnycakes.  They are like cornmeal pancakes with honey.

Awesome American History: Ben Franklin, Paul Revere, Western Missions

These were pages 27-37 in The American Story, covering 1752-1776.

Our active activity was "The Minutemen," a game we made up way back when we did our US History megaunit.

In this game, you wait until your kids are least expecting it and then you attempt to startle their socks off by screaming, "The British are coming!"

They then have 60 seconds to grab something that represents their gun, and something that represents their powder (usually something sack-like).  Or you can simplify it and just do the "musket." We had enough kids that I just had them grab a nerf weapon for a gun.

For our art activity, we made butter.  It ended up being more active than artistic (shaking a jar of cream), but I just realized that next week I have 2 art activities, so I guess it all evens out (you can tell how much I stress about these things)!

For our snack, my friend from Boston made Boston Brown Bread, and we ate it with yummy fresh butter~ and yummy it was!

Awesome American History: Salem, Great Awakening, French Exploration

These were pages 27-37, in The American Story, covering 1692-1743.

Honestly, these were tricky chapters to build activities from.  The Salem Witch Trials I made optional (we have some quite young kids) and an activity of "Let's Make Unfounded Accusations so We Can Take Your Stuff" just didn't seem fun anyway.

So we went with more general activities from the time period.

Our active activity was candle making - super fun!

We used two tall cans, one in simmering water and the other with ice water.

We chopped up the paraffin and put it in the warm can, along with some boiling water.  Yes, the water and wax together!  The wax floats on the water, and means you don't need to fill the entire can with wax (or make very short candles).

We used cotton string for wicks, weighted down with washers/ screws/nuts, etc.

You dip the string (briefly) into the wax, then into the cold water.  The cold sets the wax quickly so that you can dip again immediately.

The key is to make sure no water clings to the candle before you dip again (they turn into water filled blisters), and to do the wax dip quickly - otherwise the wax starts to melt off of the candle!

We let the kids do as many or as few dips as they wanted.

 The candles really were lovely!

The art activity was writing with quills in invisible ink (lemon juice).

Everyone loved this!

After they dried, I heated them over the stove to produce the words and drawings.

Our snack was popcorn - easy and a big hit- I think I made three batches!

Awesome American History: Pilgrims, Manhattan, Religious Freedom

 This was pages 14-22 in The American Story, by Jennifer Armstrong, covering 1620-1655.

The story we focused on was the Mayflower crossing, partly because my kids are remotely descended from those settlers. 

The second story was about the Dutch buying the island of Manhattan from the wrong tribe of Native Americans (the Dutch didn't understand the political struggle between three tribes and mistakenly believed the first tribe they came across was the uncontested owner of the island)

The third story was about Jewish people gaining citizen's rights in New Amsterdam (which became New York).



For the art activity, we constructed sailing ships, and for the active activity, we blew them across an "ocean" with autumn storms happening as they reached the middle of their journey.

Finally, for our snack we had pumpkin pie.

Super fun class and a great use of a beautiful warm spell in February!

The Return of Awesome History: Native Americans

It was epic!  No, just kidding, it was awesome!

So this is Awesome American History (round 1).  We are using  The American Story by Jennifer Armstrong  as our core book.

We read about three chapters (stories) on our own, and then we meet up to  do an art activity, an active activity, and a themed snack.

I had intended to do the whole book in two semesters, but that meant we had to read four or five chapters a week, and we ended up feeling rushed.

Since part of the idea is to be able to branch off and look more deeply into some of the historical times,we decided to spread the book over three semesters instead.

Anyway,  we started out with chapters featuring Native Americans, Roanoke, and Pocahontas. This was pages 1-13, and years 1565-1607.

 Our art activity was making a totem pole.  All the kids colored and cut out the animals and faces (quickly drawn by Shelli: it helps to have an artist on staff!).  I suspect you could find these as printables online.

The kids also used some as hats, and then made their own living totem pole.

Kid ideas put the awesome into Awesome History!


For a snack we had cornbread and parched corn. 

Yum!




Parched corn is sweet corn dried in the oven tossed with a tiny bit of butter and salt.

Warning: addictive!


The active activity was an Aztec ball game. 

It's kind of like soccer in that you can't use your hands, and kind of not like soccer in that you can't let the ball touch the floor.

If that sounds fiendishly difficult, yes.

The "goal" was to get the ball through a vertical stone hoop, but...good luck with that.  If anyone ever managed it, they automatically won the game.

Most of the time the game was about not dropping the ball, and two good teams could keep the ball in the air for an hour.

Incidentally, some historians believe that the losing teams would be sacrificed (the game was played on the field in front of the sacrificial temple (pyramid).  Other historians believe the winning team was sacrificed, since being selected as a sacrifice was an honor.

We decided to start out easy and used an air filled balloon.
And not sacrifice any of the players.

But it was pretty awesome, anyway!