Awesome American History: 1912-1919

This covered Harry Houdini, The Great Molasses Flood, and World War I.  In a lovely coincidence, this meant that we were covering WWI during Veteran's Day!  It was pages 215-224 in The American Story by Jennifer Armstrong.

For WWI, we did a poppy picture as our art project.  We talked about why poppies came to represent the fallen soldiers of WWI, and I read In Flanders Fields to them.

When I was a child, living on an Army base, WWI veterans used to sell paper poppies around Veteran's Day.  I called up my Dad to ask if I was remembering correctly - he and my mom always bought at least one and put it on the car viser.

Yes, indeed! The WWI veterans are gone now, but up in NJ, WWII (and later) veterans still sell poppies around Veteran's Day!

 For our active activity, we favored Harry Houdini by tying all the kids up and throwing them in the closet to see if they could escape.

Then all the moms had a nice quiet chat over coffee while eating all the kids' snacks.

Well, that was my idea, anyway.  What we actually did was all try to escape bamboo finger traps, which was almost as fun.

 And Klenda made molasses ginger cookies for our snack, referencing the Great Molasses Flood.  Yum!

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!

Awesome American History: 1898-1900

  This covered Edison, Labor Unions, and Prohibition, pages 184-194 in The American Story by Jennifer Armstrong.

For our art activity, we  made a newspaper and kids sold it, like the Newsies (news boys) who organized a union near the turn of the last century.

Our paper was a big hit!

















For our active activity, we did a smuggling game based on Red Light Green Light.

I was the "catcher" looking for smugglers and I stood at one end of the yard with the kids at the other end.  Every time I looked away (searching for smugglers) they moved forward, and every time I looked back, they froze.

For our snack, we were going to have root beer floats, but I had also made peanut butter cookies, and the kids had so many of those, we decided they didn't need more sugar.

Awesome American History: 1892-1898

 This covered Lizzie Borden, Helen Keller, and the Spanish American War, pages 173-183 in The American Story by Jennifer Armstrong.

Having friends in the NFB, we decided to focus on Helen Keller on this one.

I know that a lot of people going for "what it's like to be blind," set up blindfolds.  Talking to actual blind people, this is not what it's like to be blind, and it tends to perpetuate stereotypes of blindness as scary and debilitating.

Instead, we did a fun project where the kids did their names in braille, using bumpy jewels to make large feelable initials or names.

We also did the punch method where we pressed a pencil point through paper to make raised dots.  The advantage was that the dots were much more the size of regular braille.  The disadvantage was that you have to do it reversed, which was too hard for kids.

Instead, I did some and had the kids read it using the alphabet guide.

 It was really fun! 

We also watched this TED Ed video of Ted Kish explaining how he uses sonar to navigate.

For our active activity we tried the sonar exercise he suggests in his talk.

 For our snack, we had brain cupcakes in honor of Lizzie Borden and it being October.

In a weird coincidence we (my A + P classes and I ) dissected sheep brains the same day I made brain cupcakes. It was weird.

Actually, I felt stuck between, "My life is weird" and "We are rocking this homeschool thing!"

And then the kids went outside and had an epic nerf battle, because... Spanish American War? 

Yes, I'm sure that was it!

Awesome American History: 1885-1892

 This covered Skyscrapers, the Johnstown Flood, and Ellis Island, pages 163-172 in The American Story by Jennifer Armstrong.

We started out making construction paper skyscrapers as our art activity.  Some people got fancy and made cars and garages.  The kids got really into it!

Then , for the active activity, we set up all out buildings as a "city"in an underbed box, and had a flood!










For our snack, each family brought in a food from our immigrant ancestors.  It was so delicious, I forgot to take pictures, but our Irish family brought soda bread, our Swiss, German, Mexican, Cape Viridian family brought Mexican breads, and we made German Apple Fritters.

We are Prussian, Scotch-Irish, (and Scottish, and Irish), Bohemian, English, and French with some Scandinavian and Italian if you go back far enough, so we had options.  I opted for the apple fritters I was going to make anyway!

Awesome American History: 1876-1884

After we were sick for a week, we decided to merge two weeks of class, so we did pages 141-162, telephones, Locusts, the Great Chicago Fire, Custer,  OK Corral, and PT Barnum all in one go.

We started out making telephones from string and cups, and then stretching the kids around the house for a game of telephone.  That was pretty fun!  Making the telephones counted as our art project.




For our snack, Leena made cotton candy (for PT Barnum's circus).  That was very well received, to say the least.  It turned out some of the kids had never had cotton candy before!

And our active activity was supposed to be an epic nerf gun battle (for the OK Corral), but not enough people brought guns, so we did Quick Draw, a game on the Nintendo Switch.

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Awesome American History Returns! 1858-1870

We actually started two weeks ago, but did I remember to take pictures during the first class? No, I did not.

But I can tell you about it!  That class was 1858-1863 and covered Abe Lincoln, the Civil War, and Abolition.  We did a fun Underground Railroad activity in which the kids were escaping slaves (or conductors/guides) and the adults were slave catchers.  They all made it safely to Canada!

We also had a nice art activity with quilt squares.  Quilts were sewn by slaves (from scrap fabric) and often had symbolic references to freedom and escape advice.


Our snack was gingerbread men, a popular treat at that time.


These two weeks covered 120-140 in The American Story by Jennifer Armstrong.

The second class was 1867-1870, Cattle, Railroads, and John Henry.

We did a neat "Cowboy Moon" art project with coffee filters and liquid water colors.

They dropped colors onto the filters, then we dried them with a hair dryer and glued them to construction paper with silhouettes.

This was a quick and easy project with beautiful results, and I'm already thinking of how it could be adapted to other projects (Halloween Moon?).

Our active activity was roping.  I learned how to make a lariat here, and the kids practiced roping water bottles.

The key here is to success with a wide age range is to start right next to the bottle so you can see how it works, then gradually move back.


I wouldn't say we got good at it, but, by the end, some of the kids weren't bad at it.  And everyone had fun!

Our snack was Cowboy Cookies.