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!

Abe gives the Gettysburg Address

Abe and I both memorized the Gettysburg Address during this unit. The two younger boys know large chunks of it, but they can't get through the whole thing without help.

I think I had memorized the Gettysburg Address, at least partially, sometime in the distant past, and of course it's all really familiar to me, but it was surprisingly hard to move from there to actually having it truly memorized. It's that last section---with all its "rather for us" and "for us the living, rather" and "to be dedicated here" and "to be here dedicated"---that really gets me. Abe and I were in gales of laughter as he tried to help me get it. And I finally did, and so did he. I think he does such a great job reciting this; he really gives the sense of the words as well as the words themselves. Which is good, because I feel like my Abraham ought to have a special bond with the words of Abraham Lincoln.

Here he is, wearing his Abe Lincoln beard and Daisy's magician hat from last year---which doesn't quite fit his head---but it adds a nice touch. :)

Civil War Unit Final Projects

As we entered the last week of our Civil War Unit, I assigned the three boys a final project on whatever Civil War subject they chose. I gave them a few guidelines (it had to be made with materials we had on hand; it had to be something they could do mostly by themselves; it had to include several written facts about the topic; etc.) and turned them loose. Abraham and Sebastian did literally their entire projects by themselves---there was much secrecy and intrigue so no one could see anyone else's project while it was being made. I helped Malachi with his, but only with the actual construction of it---the set-up and the materials were his own ideas. I was really, really impressed by how well they all did. At our Civil War Unit Celebration (we kept accidentally calling it our Civil War Celebration, which doesn't seem very good) they each gave an oral presentation where they talked about their projects and answered questions, and they did a great job. I loved seeing what they came up with!

Hard at work

Abraham's project was a display of Civil War artillery (guns and projectiles). He taught us that there are two kinds of artillery, guns (cannons) and howitzers (of which mortars are a type). He made models of all those, with their various parts labelled.

He also had a section for shells and balls---solid shot, canister shot, shells, etc. He painstakingly created these little canisters filled with poppyseeds to represent the gunpowder or grapeshot inside. It was awesome.

Cannon

Howitzer

Malachi's project was a model of the "ironclads"---the Monitor and the Virginia (or the Merrimack as many books called it).

The Merrimack was made of a big vinegar container cut in half and covered with duct tape. I helped cut the holes for the cannons (it is historically accurate with 14 gunports, four on the broadsides and three each on the bow and stern) and cut strips of duct tape for him to use. The smokestack is a toilet paper roll and the flag is taped onto a straw.

The Monitor was just a flat strip of cardboard with a gun turret (hairspray lid+toilet paper roll+strange cone-shaped duct tape structure) and the captain's box (foreground) was part of a matchbox. The smokestacks were straws as well. Malachi was disappointed that we couldn't figure out a way to make the gun turret turn around like it really did on the ship, but I thought it looked great just how it was.

Sebastian chose to make a depiction of the Battle of Fredericksburg. It's such an interesting (and sad) battle because of all the mistakes that were made----starting with the pontoon wagons arriving 10 days late, so the engineers had to build the pontoon bridges under heavy fire from the waiting Confederates on the other side of the river. Some Union soldiers actually had to paddle across the river in pontoons to provide some cover for the engineers while they finished up the bridges, so the rest of the army could cross.

 Seb explained the movements of the battle in great detail---I think stuff like this really fascinates him. The macaroni noodles on his poster represent artillery for both sides.

He wrote it as "Fredericks-'burg'", he told me, because it's spelled differently than St. PetersBERG and he prefers the -berg spelling. :)

I could go on and on about how much I like these projects, but I'll confine myself to a simple, "Good work, boys!" :)

Civil War map and timeline

Here's what our bulletin board held during the Civil War Unit. I highly recommend this map---we referred to it, put pins in it, looked up casualties on it, and lots of other things. It was a great visual reference. The sheer number of battles in the Civil War is just amazing; you learn about the big ones and you know that isn't all of them, but I don't think I ever realized just how many there were. We also had a timeline which we added to during the unit. It was really simple: just dates of things we thought were important, along with pictures to help us remember which battle was which.

Battle Re-enactment

I thought this was a great idea, from the book The Civil War for Kids. We drew out a large map of important landmarks near a battle (we did the Battle of Chancellorsville) and then the children moved our toy soldiers around to the relevant locations, as I read to them the events of the battle. We did this on the day we talked about the biographies of Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, George Meade, and others. It seemed like a good way to realize how many decisions the General was responsible for, and how complicatedthose decisions might be (taking into account limited troops, blocked-off supply routes, river crossings, etc.).