Friday, August 4, 2023

Civil War Celebration

Our culminating unit Celebration was lots of fun! Earlier in the unit we'd talked about the new art of photography and photographers of the Civil War. Then I'd had the children take photos that told a story. We displayed them at our celebration.
Here's the invitation to our celebration, which was modeled after Lincoln's Second Inaugural Ball.
Here are the tickets—each admits one gentleman and two ladies! (These are pictures of the actual documents. It's cool to see how they really looked.)
We had one hoop skirt already, and I bought two more so all of the girls could dress up. They LOVED that! There was a great flurry of preparation all day long, doing their hair and getting all dressed.
They were lovely Civil War Belles!
Daisy did such pretty hairstyles for everyone.
And at the last moment they decided Clementine must be dressed up too, so they put her in this rather…Medieval-looking dress and a too-bit petticoat. She felt very grand!

Here are the guests arriving at the ball, the ladies on the arms of their gentlemen.
For some reason Gus felt this was appropriate attire.
We had a program to start everything off, where the children presented their Civil War Final Projects.
Ziggy hopped in at the last moment with a nice presentation on "what's in a Civil War Soldier's backpack."
Clementine added her two cents
Malachi presented "Babies of the Civil War"
And the other presentations can be read about in this post.
Next…the fancy buffet! I shortened the original menu a bit, but took all the menu items I did use from the original :) 
A great spread! For dessert I Mary Todd Lincoln's almond cake, which was surprisingly good! Very light because of the whipped egg whites, and with a nice almond flavor. It was dry a few days later, but not at all dry the day we made it. Here's the recipe…I actually blended up the almonds instead of just chopping them, so they were very fine!

Waiting politely for their food…unlike the guests at the real ball, who trampled over each other and made a huge mess when they descended upon the food, apparently!

After dinner we watched the silent movie The General with Buster Keaton (so good!) and then there was, of course, a little dancing!

Building Civil War Pontoon Bridges

We discovered last time we did this unit that water bottles make great pontoons! Sebby was fascinated with all kinds of bridges at the time, so we went much more in-depth in our bridge and army engineering study than we might otherwise have. While I don't currently have anyone quite as obsessed as Seb was, spending an afternoon at the little creek building bridges is great fun for anyone!

Here are a couple videos about modern Pontoon Bridges:


We split into teams so that each team could build their own bridge. I let them figure out their own designs and how to construct them!
Gus fell in the water almost immediately, of course. Luckily it was a hot day.
Daisy and Junie's first bridge was great! Strong enough to hold several marching soldiers.
Gus soon cheered up and was happily showing me how the cut on his toe was "almost better."
Daisy and Teddy tried a different bridge design, which worked maybe even better too. It was good to have some space between the pontoons for the current to go by and put less pressure on the bridge.
Their bridge was also nice and long!
The soldiers were able to sneak over to the enemy camp for a surprise attack!
Goldie and Junie tried a second bridge after seeing Daisy and Teddy's.
It was very sturdy!

Camp Floyd field trip

I read that Camp Floyd, which is a historical site about an hour away, was having a "Johnston's Army encampment" day during our unit. Johnston's Army is the army that came out to Utah during the "Utah War," and we members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have no warm feelings toward them, that's for sure! It was in 1857, a little before the Civil War, but the uniforms and weapons of the soldiers were similar to Civil War times. And Camp Floyd is the place they were stationed. So I decided we'd go out there for a field trip.

We'd seen Civil War reenactors before at Fort Douglas, which is right in Salt Lake City. But I'd never been to Camp Floyd. I was surprised how small the State Park is, and how little there is to do. Ha! I would never have gone there if there weren't this event being held, but even with the event I was glad we'd brought a picnic so it didn't feel like a total waste of a trip! And it got more fun after the re-enacting soldiers started showing us things like how to fire a musket and what was in their knapsacks. There were even some fun little old-fashioned games over in a nearby field. So we did have a good time.
Gus rolling hoops
Carrying water
Stick horses
Building a log cabin
There's a little museum inside this Inn, which was a stagecoach stop and a stop for the Pony Express. There are some interesting period artifacts and furniture inside.
This is a key from the telegraph machine that was here
The hugest lilac tree I've ever seen!
Our favorite part was when the soldiers showed us how to load and fire real muskets
This soldier also had an authentic army rucksack with the items a solider would have carried—comb, razor, tooth powder, sewing kit, etc.
Clementine had fun just running all around!
On the way home there was a cool storm that framed Mount Timpanogos perfectly!

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