Duels of Honor and Regency Embroidery

For the boys' sake, we had to talk about duels during this unit! (Actually, the girls are quite the experts on duels as well. It comes of reading so many Georgette Heyer books.😄)

Here are some resources we used:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8IdfA5fXJs fencing basics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGLb3sNQpow types of swords

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Toi3JY3LLUM rules of duels

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHfBCBxdf2M pistol duel

We got some water guns and tried some duelling of our own, strictly following duelling etiquette, of course! I'm sorry to say some of our seconds didn't adequately manage to talk the duellers out of their duels, and in fact, ended up getting into duels themselves!

In spite of our efforts to keep everything civilized, it soon degenerated into all-out war! Tsk tsk!

For the sake of balance, after a spot of duelling, we thought some embroidery would be in order. You can see lots of examples that still exist of embroidery from the Regency Era. (In fact, we had a whole book of them, which I somehow misplaced and had to pay the library fine for. Grrr.)

For example:

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1881597262599226&set=pcb.1243320060690093 Jane Austen’s quilt

https://curatorscurio.com/2020/02/12/is-this-jane-austens-sampler/ pictures

https://janeaustens.house/news/conserving-cassandras-handkerchief/ handkerchief

The girls are pretty experienced already with embroidery, so I got them some little samplers to work on and practice new stitches.

These had the guides printed right on the fabric, which made it easy. I think they were fun to do; the girls seemed to like them. Junie and Daisy are still working on theirs (Daisy was madly doing some cross-stitch pictures for their bedroom right then, plus crocheting a blanket and making some crocheted things for Malachi, so her time with it was limited), but Goldie finished hers and it is beautiful:

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I especially like the embroidered flowers, and hope my girls could make a set of napkins like this one pictured above someday! My Nana did beautiful handwork like that and I think she would be proud of how good the girls are getting!

For the boys, who have less to no experience with embroidery, I did what my mom did for me when I was little: drew designs of things they like on pieces of cloth and had them just stitch along the lines. They were very enthusiastic, and even Gus got the hang of it pretty quickly! A few times over a week or so, I walked into a room to find every person in it quietly embroidering! Quite a sight to see!

They were justly proud of their finished work! Here is Gus's Caw (Sam drew the picture)

Teddy's basketball bunny (I traced a picture I found)

And Ziggy's cute fox eating a mouse!

The French Revolution (and a little about the Industrial Revolution)

The French Revolution is such an interesting time. I have been writing a Scarlet Pimpernel-inspired book for the last four years so I've been immersed in the era anyway. But it was really interesting to broaden our focus to what was happening politically in England at that time too and how it affected everyday life for those in both countries. And Napoleon! He is a fascinating figure as well. Then when you reflect that Joseph Smith was also alive during this time, and the church of Jesus Christ being restored, it starts to seem like this era was one of the most important in history!

We really liked these video summaries of the French Revolution and its significance, especially the ones with asterisks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBn7iWzrKoI French rev. video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D3hQS6ezXc Marie Antoinette

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTTvKwCylFY French Revolution crash course

https://www.prageru.com/videos/william-wilberforce-ending-the-slave-trade

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w96Ad6N_SGA French Revolution Part I (Dennis Prager)

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ND5K0xS7YQ Part II

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqJuSRLsJzc Understanding Napoleon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd6E38FfuMg&t=172s Napoleon

I'm sorry to say that the little boys are fascinated with the guillotine! Here's a quick video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbBkybZMa7g

I found this book at a used bookstore (it was definitely not $172 as this linked one is!) and we have been making the paper model in the book. It's fun but takes lots of cutting and precise folding, so it took us a long time, and we had to put it away for dinner one day and just never got it back out again! So we still need to complete it. But I think it will be cool when it's done (I'll try to remember to put a picture here of it!).

The Industrial Revolution was proceeding along during these years as well. It could really be a whole unit in itself, but we did talk one day about steam power and some of the changes it brought into everyday life. We got the steam engine model linked below and it was fun to put together so we could see how the basic steam engine worked!

https://www.history.com/videos/the-guillotine

https://www.prageru.com/videos/tbh-history-industrial-revolution-part-1

https://www.prageru.com/videos/tbh-history-industrial-revolution-part-2-freedom-vs-control

Build steam engine model https://www.enginediy.com/collections/steam-engine-parts/products/steam-engine-kits-to-build

Making cloth and paper fans

We thought it would be fun to try making fans, since fans were a part of Regency life (and even had their own sort of language…see here: https://www.austentation.com/blogs/regency-fashion-history-1/fans)

We used the instructions here: https://www.ehow.com/how_4449525_make-japanese-fans.html?utm_source=Pinterest&utm_medium=organic&epik=dj0yJnU9X3FIdXlWOVItWkV6Z0toNl9JYzF3cVhkVTZJQW5sT1MmcD0wJm49X0Q1RVJiUTV5YUtBamdJaEVCT0VfUSZ0PUFBQUFBR29La3k4

We thought it would look pretty to use lace, but then we had to put paper behind the lace, and it made the whole thing rather too fat for the sticks. So our fans didn't fold very well. Next time maybe we'd try just using a pretty wrapping paper (a thin one, or even tissue paper) to make it thinner.

Some other links about home life in the era:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_PzBxJfTsI Jane Austen’s house tour

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMjUYBDzCig Behind the scenes at Apsley House

Make a paper sedan chair https://www.historicenvironment.scot/media/6193/make-your-own-edinburgh-sedan-chair.pdf

https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/members-area/kids/kids-area---fashion-and-fads/marble-hill-craft/ make a model Georgian house

https://archive.org/details/miseriesofhumanl00bere/page/10/mode/2up the Miseries of Human Life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWUmbWSDqTc Lyme Park (Pemberley)

Gus and Clementine made this other kind of fan, just the accordian pleated kind, which worked pretty well—but even those had a hard time staying closed with their thick paper inside. Maybe our handles (plastic straws) just weren't strong enough.

Regency Unit, and writing a Regency letter

It is terribly sad, but Daisy is graduating from our homeschool and going to college in the Fall! I feel it more keenly than with the older boys, because by this age the boys had mostly disengaged already, either going to public school or doing outside classes and hardly ever joining our family school. But Daisy has valiantly participated to the very end, doing the activities with us and even sitting through our read-aloud books whenever she is able. It is wonderful to have her with us. She brings the kind of enthusiasm that makes me a better teacher. So, I will be VERY SAD to have her go (and she says she will still join us when she can—but I know it won't be often now), and in her honor I let her choose anything she wanted to study for our last unit with her.

She chose, wonderfully, to study The Regency Era. What a great unit! I was very excited about it. For our purposes we chose to study the longer time period (many people classify the whole period from 1795-1837 as Regency-era, even though the Prince Regent was only officially in power in England from 1811-1820). It encompasses so much great stuff. The French Revolution! The early American Republic! Beethoven and Napoleon! And of course, Jane Austen.

For Public Relations purposes, I called this unit "The French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars" when talking to the little boys. And "The Regency Era" when talking to the girls. Thus, everyone was happy.

We learned about lots of people and events as part of this unit, and then we also took as our inspiration some of the expected accomplishments of a well-bred young lady of the era. One day we made quill pens and learned how to write with pen and ink. The older kids also practiced some types of penmanship of the time period, notably "copperplate" (roundhand) and Italian hand. I got each of the girls an inexpensive fountain pen to use. I love fountain pens!

Here are some relevant links:

https://herreputationforaccomplishment.wordpress.com/2015/05/06/anatomy-of-a-regency-letter/ Writing a letter, how to fold a letter

https://herreputationforaccomplishment.wordpress.com/2015/02/11/minums-for-handwriting-practice/ handwriting

https://books.google.com/books?id=GAVQAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false handwriting practice and samples

https://herreputationforaccomplishment.wordpress.com/2015/04/22/rules-for-writing-long-and-short-s-in-jane-austens-era/ the Long S

We already had sealing wax (from our American Revolution unit, maybe?) and were happy to have an excuse to get it out again. Malachi uses sealing wax as a matter of course on all his correspondance, actually, so it was readily at hand.

(Clementine had been going around doing all her sisters' hair throughout this activity, and eventually we took a picture of them all coiffed by her handiwork):

Daisy's writing

Junie's writing

Goldie's lovely (left-handed!) writing

Clementine drew some gnomes and a Caw with the fountain pen. Not bad!

This was Ziggy writing in some other language, I believe