Revolutionary War Unit Activities

Even though we learned this last time, I'd forgotten how to make a five-pointed star with one cut! Betsy Ross would be ashamed of me. So, we learned again! (I even used it in my primary class the next week…it fit with the lesson somehow.) You can find lots of tutorials for how to do this. We used this one.

Junie got quite good at it! Big and tiny star.

Daisy decided to make a whole flag and was surprised at how much work it took to get all the stars arranged right, the stripes to be the right width, etc.

We got to visit my friend's house again and have us show us her spinning wheel, etc.

We wrote messages with invisible ink and then (somewhat clumsily) put them over a candle flame to reveal them.

We got a real sealing wax kit from Amazon and it was fun to use! You melt the little sticks of wax over a flame and then use the stamp to press them over the fold of your letter. They looked really pretty!

Ziggy was suitably impressed.

The minuteman game we played last time was so much fun that we did it again. This time the children had to get on all their clothes and run around the house with their musket. We timed everyone and then they tried to beat their times. There was LOTS of laughter. Especially because the boots and coats they were using were so big and hard to run in!

We loved learning about Ben Franklin's glass armonica, and making a similar one ourselves. Getting the glass armonica to work was surprisingly hard! Sebastian had gotten really good at it last time, but for awhile I was convinced we had the wrong kind of glasses because we could not get a single sound out of them! (I don't actually think you have to have any certain kind of glasses, but it sure was hard at first!) It took us a good twenty minutes of trying (unsuccessfully) before we produced some sound, and another ten minutes before being able to get anything to work reliably. Junie persevered for a long time and eventually became quite good, and then all the other children were impressed and became more patient themselves too. I think everyone was able to play pretty well by the end of the day!

Junie reinvented the wheel and made this music notation sheet so she could play a song more than once, and remember which levels to fill the glasses to.

Here are some videos that demonstrate the glass armonica being played:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEKlRUvk9zc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQemvyyJ--g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSK_qObahWY (this one is from Mr. Rogers--it's cute)

Revolutionary War Clothing

Last time, we made colonial tricorne hats for the boys. It was a cool project, but quite involved, and since we still have the hats I didn't think it was worth doing it again! We just got out our old hats for the little boys to wear. Ziggy (the hat-lover) was SO PLEASED to wear his. He wore it all the time for weeks. Maybe months. 

He was always marching around outside or inside, often singing or holding a musket of some sort. Funny boy.

We also made mob caps during our previous unit, and they were really cute, but I just had to sew them myself because the children were too young to help. They probably could have handled it this time, but we were pressed for time that week and I finally just ended up having us make these simple new-sew versions. They were cute too, though the other ones are more authentic. Here is a link to the simple version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ougzi-6PjY

The girls were really interested in colonial clothing, and we found some cool videos that showed in a lot of detail how the upper classes and the lower classes would have dressed.

Getting dressed: colonial men  

Getting dressed: colonial women 

Getting dressed: servants

Daisy was quite inspired after viewing these videos, and made herself a very authentic colonial outfit, complete with underclothing and long woolen stockings with garters.

For our end-of-unit celebration, we watched our favorite movie about the Constitution ("A More Perfect Union") and the children dressed up as people from the time of the Revolutionary War. Daisy was George Washington (in this portrait).

We had red, white, and blue jello (using this recipe, and making the white layer with unflavored gelatin, sour cream, and whipped cream).

Junie went through several costume iterations. This one was her dressed as the haughty King George III.

And Goldie was the lovely Martha Washington!

Revolutionary War Unit Food

Another Liberty Tea Party—with various herbal teas, and a delicious "colonial" pound cake!

Here is the recipe for the pound cake. Since I am finding that many of these links end up broken after several years, and I LIKE this pound cake recipe, I will reproduce it here (it's already in my recipe book):

1 cup butter
3 cups sugar
1 cup sour cream
1⁄2 teaspoon baking soda
3 cups all-purpose flour
6 large eggs
1 -2 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat the oven to 325.
Cream butter and sugar together with your heavy-duty mixer.
Add the sour cream and mix thoroughly.
Sift baking soda and flour together.
Add the flour to the creamed mixture, alternating with one egg at a time (about 1/2 cup of flour each time).
Mix well after each addition.
Add the vanilla and mix well.
Spoon the mixture into a well greased and floured 10 inch tube or bundt pan.
Bake for 1 hour and 20 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in cake tests COMPLETELY clean.
Let cake cool in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes.
Invert cake on wire rack, removing from pan and let cool completely.

Things to mention while making the cake:

• Pound cakes became popular in the 1700's.

• Why might they be called pound cakes? Original recipe: 1 pound cake flour (3-1/2 cups), 1 pound butter (2 cups), 1 pound sugar (2-1/4 cups), & 1 pound eggs (9 large).

• We have changed the recipe because we would find this cake dense and not as tasty.

• To make less dense, we add a leavener, which helps things rise. Here we're using baking soda.

• This would have been a very special treat because it used sugar instead of molasses and sugar was very expensive.

We also made Indian Pudding (or Hasty Pudding) one day, which you can find the recipe for here or here. This time we made it in the Instant Pot, which is a great way to cook cheesecakes or puddings. You just wrap the dish securely in foil to keep the water out. Add 1 cup of water to the pot and place the wrapped dish on top of the trivet. Cook on the Manual setting for 30-45 minutes.

And another day, we tried making Maple Cream candy. I didn't love it, but maybe we didn't make it quite right? Anyway the children were happy enough to eat it. Instructions here.

Last time we did this unit, we read a book that told about "Thomas Jefferson's Vanilla Ice Cream." We didn't have that book this time, but we did find the same recipe from Thomas Jefferson on the Monticello website. It's even in his own handwriting! So cool! It made good ice cream, too. We thought it was pretty similar to our usual vanilla bean ice cream, if maybe slightly less sweet.

Here are some other colonial recipes (or "receipts") we had fun looking at, too. 

We found this list of table manners for colonial children (these were written by George Washington) and thought they were pretty great:

“Never sit down at the table till asked, and after the blessing. Ask for nothing; tarry till it be offered thee. Speak not. Bite not thy bread but break it. Take salt only with a clean knife. Dip not the meat in the same. Hold not thy knife upright but sloping, and lay it down at right hand of plate with blade on plate. Look not earnestly at any other that is eating. When moderately satisfied leave the table. Sing not, hum not, wriggle not. Spit no where in the room but in the corner..."

"Eat not too fast nor the Greedy Behavior. Eat not vastly but moderately. Make not a noise with thy Tongue, Mouth, Lips, or Breath in Thy Eating and Drinking. Smell not of thy Meat; nor put it to Thy Nose; turn it not the other side upward on Thy Plate."

Revolutionary War Unit Study (II)

Dramatic scene showing George Washington being attacked by a British soldier, with Martha looking on in horror!

This is our second time around learning about the Revolutionary War. (Here are all my posts about the first unit.) We did some of the same activities and read a few of the same books, but found a lot of new books at the library too! And it's interesting how the current crop of students influences the activities I choose, or how we do them.

It was also fun this time because the children's cousins in California were studying the Revolutionary War in their homeschool around the same time, so we shared activities and ideas. I wish we lived closer so we could've done some things actually together, but it was kind of cool just knowing that they were learning and doing some of the same things as us!

Here's the pinterest page from our previous Revolutionary War Unit, in 2014.

A video about Colonial Williamsburg

A video overview of the Thirteen Colonies

A fun game about taxation (with M&Ms) https://betterlesson.com/lesson/575437/the-king-s-taxation-m-m-s

Follow-up video here: https://youngteacherlove.com/role-playing-with-american-revolution/

Activities we did with food

Activities about Colonial Clothing

Other Revolutionary War Activities

Final Revolutionary War Celebration, and Apple Pie

Apple pie! A fine and verifiable American tradition, and thus the perfect dessert to accompany our final celebration. Here are a couple good links about the history of pie in America:

Cultural History of Apple Pie

History of Pie in America

We've never made a lattice-crust pie before, so that was fun

The sparkling sugar we sprinkled on top of the pie burned in a strange splotchy way, but otherwise, we thought it looked quite beautiful!

For our celebration, we watched my favorite history movie: A More Perfect Union. I probably watched it in school five or six times, but I still love it every time. (And we had watched it before as a family, during our Government Unit.) It's a production done quite awhile ago by BYU, and it has aged remarkably well—no embarrassing or dated parts, great music, great characters. I love it. It tells the (miraculous, really!) story of the Constitutional Convention. It really makes the events understandable and clear. I looked around to see if you could watch it online, and it doesn't look like you can, but it's totally worth buying. I could watch it every year! The children really liked it too.

Battle of Trenton and Crossing the Delaware Re-enactment

The Battle of Trenton (and of course George Washington crossing the Delaware River) is one of those things I feel like I've always heard of but never really understood. I think I just hadn't ever read or learned about it before, or maybe I've just forgotten. Anyway, it was such an important battle and significant time during the war that I was really hoping we could do something memorable when we learned about it. My boys show great capacity for remembering battle-related stuff, anyway (much better than I do) because they really love it. So I decided we'd have school outside by the stream so we could do a re-enactment.

After reading several books describing the battle, we readied our soldiers. (We only have Civil War Soldier toys, but they sufficed.)

Here are the poor, cold, sick American soldiers standing in the snow. As you can see, some of them have bandages around their bare and bleeding feet. There's George Washington in the back with his powdered wig. :)

The American soldiers got into their boats and started to cross the Delaware. They had to fight through the chunks of ice floating in the river. It took them hours to get everyone across.

The British army, or more specifically their German Hessian mercenaries (who, if there's one thing I remember from my AP US History class in high school, "wanted booty, not duty") were fast asleep, snuggled under their nice blankets. Pretend that one guy with the musket is asleep too. :)

The Hessians are tired because of their raucous Christmas celebrations that day. Oh dear, they've only left one guard on duty, standing by their lovely snow-covered Christmas tree (with a blue spiny star on top)!

The exhausted Americans surround their camp. Taken by surprise, the Hessians surrender after hardly putting up a fight! A stunning victory for the ragtag Americans! And just in time for the new year!

Spinning and Weaving Field Trip

This field trip was so awesome. I have a friend that is an expert spinner and weaver (she's even in Guilds and things) and she agreed to let us come over and see how it's done! The children had been curious about spinning and weaving ever since we had talked about how long it might take someone during Colonial times to complete one homemade shirt—after shearing the sheep, carding the wool, spinning it, weaving it into cloth, and sewing it up. We talked about how careful you would be to mend the shirt and patch it and make it last as long as you could, and then reuse the cloth for baby clothes or quilts or in any way you could! Anyway, when I told them we were going to get to see a real spinning wheel they were very excited.

First, my friend let us feel some different types of wool. The sheep wool was kind of coarse and fluffy, and we loved the alpaca—so soft! Then she let the children try carding the wool by hand.

They liked doing that. It was pretty hard work! Like combing tangly, tangly hair (but without all the crying and ouching that usually goes with that task, of course) :)

Then she got out her drum carder, which does the same job in much less time! That was a big hit, especially with Sebby, who kept going back to it and carding more and more wool the whole time we were there.

Then we stretched out the carded wool in preparation for spinning. I've forgotten what this process was called. Maybe drawing?

The spinning wheel was so cool! It was amazing to see it in action. I had thought it would be too delicate for us to do anything but watch, but Cayenne let all the children have a turn at spinning! It was a pretty complicated process, and took a lot of coordination to feed the wool in, keep the tension right, and push the treadle at the same time. They got on much better when Cayenne worked the treadle and they only had to concentrate on feeding in the wool.

Here is Sebby's little ball of yarn which he made all by himself: carding and then spinning (well, you know, by "all by himself" I mean that Cayenne did all the treadling and helped him hold the yarn steady). Now if he just crochets it or knits it into a little tiny blanket, he will have really accomplished something! :) He was SO, SO, proud of himself. He kept the yarn in his pocket for the next several days and kept pulling it out and admiring it. Cute. :)

It was a wonderful field trip and we learned so much!