Wordless Wednesday: C + O Canal

Happy Veteran's Day!

Bonus Poem!

In Flanders Fields

By John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

    That mark our place; and in the sky

    The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

    Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

        In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

    The torch; be yours to hold it high.

    If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

        In Flanders fields.

HT: Poetry Foundation

American History

 Was it last week that we went to the American History Museum?  We've been a bit bogged down with doctor visits and I'm losing track!  Fortunately those multiple doctor visits should be slowing down within the next few weeks.

At any rate, we've been wading through Land of Hope.  I can't say I fully endorse it, not that it isn't full of good stuff, but it's more appropriate for college level work, IMHO. Or it would be great for a kid who was fascinated by American history.








Lots of thoughtful pages completely covered with text with scarcely any pictures.  I've ended up skimming chapters and discussing the interesting points they bring up, and that's been surprisingly fruitful.

They have also been rewatching some of Liberty's Kids while I've been off doing doctory stuff.


 Our visits to Fort McHenry and now the American History museum have tied in very well and helped put some visual interest into the concepts.



I do think that the military history exhibit on the top floor is probably the best designed museum exhibit I've ever experienced, both in terms of telling a continuous narrative and telling a complex nuanced story.






In the book we are still in the early years of the country, but we are seeing the set up of many of the conflicts that continue to the present day, and this exhibit was a great way to tie everything together in an interesting discussion.

Wordless Wednesday: American History Museum

Wordless Wednesday: Fort McHenry

Awesome American History:1945-1969

Well, that's a big bite of history!  This was three history classes squished into one, catching up from traveling and illness.

Because I am blogging these to give a possible framework to others (and so that I don't have to reconstruct the class if I ever do it again), I'm going to treat the
three weeks separately.

1945-1947, WWII, Computers, and the Housing Boom (pages 267-276 in The American Story by Jennifer Armstrong.). Our art activity was coloring WWII posters from this book.  Our active activity was playing Battleship from this printout.  Our snack was Sun Chips (like computer chips).

1952-1955, Polio, Segregation, Montgomery Boycott (pages 277-287 in The American Story by Jennifer Armstrong).  Our art activity was a bus for the Montgomery Boycott.  Our active activity was a vaccination game using Glogerm to show disease spread.  Our snack was black and white cookies (segregation).

1956-1969, Elvis, Cuban Missiles, Moon Landing (pages 288-297 in The American Story by Jennifer Armstrong).  Our art activity was doing pictures in rhinestones while listening to Elvis, our active activity was dancing to Elvis music, and our snack was "moon" cheese.

Incidentally, I'd like to give a shout out to Extra History's excellent short videos on the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

Wordless Tuesday: Museum of the American Indian

Wordless Thursday: American Indian Museum

Chilly New Year

No kidding, it has been cold here! I don't think I've felt my feet in two weeks! We've had highs in the teens and lows in the single digits, and wind chills below zero. 

For those of you sensible enough to be using the metric system, it was a high of -8, a low of -16, and a windchill of -23 today. Brrrrrrrrr.

But it reminded me that a park ranger had told me (many months ago) that I should visit Great Falls when it got really cold!

Wow!

 Even more amazing, they were working on the canal, so they had drained it!

We had lots of fun scampering around the dry canal, picking up freshwater clam shells and finding heron footprints in the icy puddles.

Even better, we got to go down into the locks and see how everything works!

  It was 20 degrees and breezy (-7 C), but we ended up spending two hours outside exploring the frozen falls and dry canals!

Then we needed to go home and have lots of hot chocolate to warm up!