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!

George Washington, and making powdered wigs

George Washington is one of my favorite people, and there are lots of good books about him. I loved getting the chance to learn even more about his life during this unit.

Here are some nice anecdotes about George Washington.

The children liked this story too.

And here is my favorite story of all about the Founding Fathers—the prophet Wilford Woodruff's vision of them in the St. George temple. There are claims that this story is untrue, but this link gives a bit of explanation and historical background, and supports the story's fundamental accuracy, in my opinion. 

We really wanted to make powdered wigs during this unit, as how can you be a good Revolutionary War Leader without one? I found a bunch of online tutorials for making powdered wigs with a painter's hat as the base, but I didn't want to buy hats for everyone. (I also don't quite like the silhouette of the painter's hat "wig." The ponytail part doesn't look right to me.) Then I found this tutorial for making a wig out of a paper bag. That seemed like a good idea, but all the paper bags we had around weren't right—lunch bags were too small and grocery sacks were too big! So I ended up just using the same idea on butcher paper, which means you have to tape and cut in a few places in order to get the right shape. I will post my template here—for a wig Daisy's size (small 5-year-old), you can just print out these two pages on regular 8 1/2 x 11 paper (make them fill the whole paper) and it will be around the right size.

If you wanted to make a bigger wig, you could enlarge the templates or just trace around them bigger on butcher paper.

It probably looks more complicated than it is, and maybe the whole painter's hat thing is going to be better for most people anyway, but on the off-chance there are people like me who hate having to go to the store for any supplies and will spend 50x the effort trying to rig something together themselves to avoid it—well, these templates will save you a little work. 

Once you have the base of the wig cut and taped together, the gluing part is easy and fun. You have to have a million cotton balls if you're doing wigs for 4 kids like we were, but luckily we keep a million cotton balls on hand around here. :) Gluing and placing the fwuffballs—I mean cotton balls—is a satisfying task. Even little Daisy enjoyed it. You just cover every square inch of the base with cotton balls, tie a ribbon around the the ponytail, and voila! A lovely powdered wig.

There's a bit of a hump at the back of the head, but we don't mind it. :)

I thought the wigs looked particularly nice with the tricorne hats we made!

Boston Tea Party Re-enactment

We had great fun re-enacting the Boston Tea Party! The children were delighted when they learned how unlike our previous tea party this one was going to be! First we made Mohawk Indian headbands to wear as disguises. Then the children sneaked out as quietly as possible, onto the British Tea Ship in the Boston Harbor (the back porch). 

I (representing the British war ships floating not far away) was out in the back yard, keeping a sharp eye out and ready to fire my cannons if there was trouble!

The Sons of Liberty found a great many chests---342, to be precise---full of tea sitting on the merchant ship. (I found a bunch of fallen leaves in a park nearby and gathered bags and bags of them to use as tea leaves!) 

Working quickly and silently [or not-so-silently---our Sons of Liberty proceeded with much giggling and whispering], they emptied all the tea out of the chests---right into Boston Harbor!

When every last tea chest was empty, the Sons of Liberty turned out their pockets (to show they weren't concealing any tea) and filed off the ship one by one. What a daring act of provocation toward the British!

Boston Brown Bread (and Boston Baked Beans)

The city of Boston is an important place in the history of the American Revolution, and we talked a lot about various landmarks and famous people from Boston. One night for dinner we celebrated some of Boston's history by making Boston Baked Beans and Boston Brown Bread.

I didn't think our baked beans turned out that great, but the brown bread was really interesting. It's a kind of bread I've never made before---you bake it in aluminum cans in a water bath! It's a quick bread, so no yeast, and it actually comes together quite fast. The bread turns out sweet (from the molasses) and really moist. It uses rye flour and cornmeal along with the wheat flour, as wheat flour was a precious commodity in colonial times! The cooking method was also ideal for colonial homes, because most people didn't have ovens, and this bread could be steamed in a cooking pot over the fire. We liked it a lot. It's worth trying just to see how cool the round bread loaves look when they're all baked! Here's some history on Boston Brown Bread, if you're interested.

And here's the recipe we used.

After mixing up the batter, you pour it into empty cans (coffee cans were specified in most recipes, but I used three green-bean-sized cans [14.5 oz.] and they worked great). You cover each can with foil and tie it with a string so no water can get in.

Then you just put the cans in a few inches of water, bring it to a boil, and let them steam for a half hour or so. It's really amazing that this process produces such nice loaves of bread! It was really fun to make.

Liberty Tea Party

We learned that the Patriots in the American Colonies showed their disgust with the tax on tea by boycotting tea altogether, and making their own "Liberty Tea"---a generic term for whatever herbal tea they could make with herbs from their own gardens. We love making herbal tea and have several herbs in our garden and in the pantry (raspberry leaf, peppermint, spearmint, fennel, anise, chamomile, etc.), so we made our own Liberty Tea and had a tea party!

We used our finest dishes, of course (the tea set I got from my Nana) and we made a delicious pound cake to go with our tea. As a bonus, the recipe recommended by this site turned out to be the best pound cake I've had (and I've been searching for a good, moist pound cake for a long time)!

We do love tea parties! (And hot chocolate parties.)

This is just a monkey. Drinking tea. With a black eye.

Along with our tea party, we had a discussion on taxation and the "no taxation without representation" slogan. We played a game where one person got to be the "king" and decide what all the taxes (we used mints as money) would be for. 

Seb, as king, started small, but soon was imposing grandiose taxes on everyone wearing socks---all the eleven-year-olds---anyone who licked their lips---all the girls---etc. Soon we had quite a rebellion on our hands. :) Everyone liked it better when we changed the game so that everyone could vote on what things were taxed and where those taxes went. 

Homemade Mob Caps

I thought about making tricornes for everyone, but then I found a great tutorial for making mob caps, so I made these for the little girls instead. They were too young to really be of much help (although they did help me trace circles on the fabric before cutting it out), so I just sewed the caps up myself, but an older child could certainly sew the casing and thread in the elastic, which is basically all there is to it. I think they turned out so cute! They gather up quite a bit so don't be afraid that the circles look big when you start. The tutorial recommends 18-20 inches in diameter, and I did 18" for Daisy's cap (she is 4 years old), but I made the one for Junie (age 3) smaller in diameter--more like 16.5". It fits her okay, but it would have been fine at the bigger size, and left more space to grow. It's a bit shallow for her head as it is.

Again, here's the tutorial: http://pattisoriginals-pattisplace.blogspot.com/2010/12/tutorial-mop-cap.html

I didn't make a cap for baby Goldie (age 1) but she looked quite cute wearing Daisy's!

Rebus letters

We learned that a popular activity in Colonial times was making and solving Rebus puzzles, which are messages that replace some words or letters with pictures or symbols. I remember reading these in The Friend magazine when I was young and liking them. We looked at these rebus letters from actual colonial times, and then tried making our own. Fun!

Indian Pudding

One day we made this Colonial dish, Indian Pudding, which is a cornmeal-and-milk pudding, sweetened with molasses, that reminded us a bit of pumpkin pie or some other custard pie. It's related to "hasty pudding," which I'm sure you know from the song "Yankee Doodle"! We thought it was interesting and good, especially when warm, and it probably would have been even better topped with whipped cream. It's really simple to make, too.

Here is one recipe for Indian Pudding.


Here is an article that discusses the history of this pudding.