The 1800's and the Restoration of the Gospel Homeschool Unit

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In October 2019, the President of our Church, Russell M. Nelson, announced that 2020 would be a year to celebrate the Restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ on the earth, which commenced with Joseph Smith's vision 200 years ago in 1820. He asked every member and family to

prepare for a unique conference that will commemorate the very foundations of the restored gospel. 

You may wish to begin your preparation by reading afresh Joseph Smith’s account of the First Vision as recorded in the Pearl of Great Price. Our course of study for next year in Come, Follow Me is the Book of Mormon. You may wish to ponder important questions such as, “How would my life be different if my knowledge gained from the Book of Mormon were suddenly taken away?” or “How have the events that followed the First Vision made a difference for me and my loved ones?” Also, with the Book of Mormon videos now becoming available, you may wish to incorporate them in your individual and family study. 

Select your own questions. Design your own plan. Immerse yourself in the glorious light of the Restoration. As you do, general conference next April will be not only memorable; it will be unforgettable.

I spent a few months worrying about how on earth we were going to "immerse ourselves in the glorious light of the restoration." I knew I could study the priesthood and Joseph Smith History on my own, but how to get the family involved too? After talking to Sam about it, I finally decided we'd take some time in Spring of 2020 to do a Homeschool Unit on the 1800's in general, and the events of the Restoration in particular. Sam said he was always much more able to understand and appreciate church events when he had a good picture of what else was going on in the world at the same time, so I thought that would be a good place to start.

I also realized that we'd studied the American Revolution, and we'd studied the Civil War, but we'd never really studied the time period in between the two, so this unit would be a good chance to fill that gap.

Some of the main historical events and issues we talked about from the 1800's:

• Colonialism

• the French and Indian War/Seven Years' War
• the War of 1812
• the Napoleonic Wars

• the Louisiana Purchase

• the Lewis and Clark Expedition

• the Gold Rush

• the Erie Canal

• the Missouri Compromise

• the French Revolution

• the Napoleonic Code

We also discussed contemporary figures:

• Napoleon Bonaparte

• Charles Dickens

• Ludwig van Beethoven, and the Classical and Romantic Eras in music

• Abraham Lincoln

• Louisa May Alcott

• Ralph Waldo Emerson

One thing I hadn't realized was how closely contemporary, and really quite similar in many ways, Joseph Smith and Abraham Lincoln were. They may even have met once! I read these two books and thought they were both great:

Men of Destiny, by Lu Ann Brobst Staheli

The Lincoln Hypothesis, by Timothy Ballard

I shared parts of them with the children, and I wanted my older boys to read especially the Timothy Ballard one, but they didn't ever get around to it. Too bad.

I had planned this unit to take place in the six weeks or so leading up to General Conference, and so as things turned out it also corresponded with the cancelling of everything due to the Coronavirus Pandemic. Luckily, we already had our library books, and though I had a few field trips planned up to Temple Square to watch the Joseph Smith movie and do some other things, we were able to figure out substitute activities at home. And luckily, all the church movies are also online. There are worse ways to spend quarantine than studying the early days of the Restoration! I found it calming and comforting to have that be our focus, and I was really grateful to feel that we had truly prepared ourselves to experience the historic April 2020 Conference!

Here are some links to resources we watched or studied:

Organization of the church:
•  https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/inspiration/latter-day-saints-channel/watch/collection/childrens-bible-videos/jesus-organizes-the-church?lang=eng
•  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJnN2FkgD-g#action=share

Pictures of painting or house restoration (in connection with discussion on Restoration):
• https://www.belfor.com/en/ca/galerie-de-photos
• https://www.gearygallery.com/accent-restoration/oil-painting-restoration/

Matching Game about the Restoration:
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/bc/content/shared/content/images/magazines/friend/2018/04/april-2018-friend-magazine-mormon_2060580.pdf matching game

The First Vision:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hv8Mu-KLGgc&feature=youtu.be first vision

Book of Mormon Translation: 

• https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/media-library/video/2018-09-1080-how-did-joseph-smith-translate-the-book-of-mormon?lang=eng
• https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/inspiration/latter-day-saints-channel/watch/series/now-you-know/where-did-the-book-of-mormon-come-from-now-you-know?lang=eng
• Article: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2006/10/plain-and-precious-truths-restored?lang=eng
• “Days of Harmony” video: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/media-library/video/2018-03-1000-days-of-harmony?lang=eng

• “A day for the eternities” video: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/media-library/video/2018-03-2000-a-day-for-the-eternities?lang=eng

Emma Smith:
• https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1992/08/my-great-great-grandmother-emma-hale-smith?lang=eng
• https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/emma-hale-smith?lang=eng

A Mary Whitmer story:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP_EMknPE10

I found so many great ideas and links (many of these above) at my friend Montserrat's blog, A Gospel Centered Home. She has simple Family Home Evening lesson ideas and tons of activities for kids. 

Here's my (fairly scant) Pinterest Board for this unit.

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Making Butter.

 Silhouettes are a fun 19th-century art project; you can find instructions here. Junie did one too but I guess I don't have a picture!

Pioneer Handkerchief Dolls we made

The atomic bomb

We did a whole unit on Nuclear Energy a few years ago. It was one of our favorite units! You can find all the posts about that unit aggregated here.

The Nuclear Museum in Albuquerque.

Hydrogen bombs vs. atom bombs

Great article on why we dropped the atomic bomb. And some more good resources on the same subject. Definitely worth watching and teaching. I found a real lack of good information on this subject elsewhere, as most children's books and other modern resources have a sort of glib "we all know better now" sensibility on the subject.

Abe and I LOVED this book, Bomb, by one of our favorite authors, Steve Sheinkin. There is SO MUCH intrigue and so many behind-the-scenes details I had never before heard about. It reads like a mystery novel.

I can also recommend this book (for adults and older children), Hiroshima Diary, which is a journal written by a doctor in Hiroshima in the weeks immediately following the Hiroshima bomb. It is fascinating, sad, and surprisingly good-humored as well. The author seems like a pretty amazing man.

World War II Homeschool Unit and Lesson Plan

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I feel like World War II consumed so much of our year, although the unit itself took only a couple of months. But I've been living in that time period ever since we studied WWI last year. I got to travel to London and Berlin during that time too, which only increased my fascination. But it also felt daunting to actually start this unit, because there is just SO MUCH. Each aspect could be a whole course of study in itself! Pearl Harbor! Hiroshima! Iwo Jima! The Holocaust! The Battle of the Bulge! I just felt so overwhelmed.

Finally I decided to just plow ahead, knowing we'd fail to do some of it justice, and I think what we ended up with was a pretty good overview. I had been reading about the War quite extensively myself all year, and even though I didn't systematically share all the things I learned with the children, I found things coming back to my memory surprisingly often, and I felt like it gave color and interest to so many subjects. I'll mention some of the books I read on the pages about individual topics, but a couple general favorites were The Gathering Storm (by Churchill himself!), Lines of Battle (a book my WWII-expert friend lent me—it's a collection of actual letters from soldiers, arranged chronologically—surprisingly absorbing and heartbreaking), In the Garden of Beasts (a fascinating portrait of the American ambassador to Germany right before the war. I also wrote about this one here) and "Those Angry Days," (really interesting look at the little-known ins and outs of the build-up to war in the U.S.).

Here are a few posts on WWII-related places I visited:

The Brandenburg Gate, and some pictures of before and after WWII in Berlin

The Reichstag Building and the New Synagogue in Berlin

Site of the Potsdam Conference

Thoughts on war and suffering

***
On to the unit itself! Here are some resources that didn't fit on my other posts.

Link to my World War II Unit Pinterest Board, so you can see many of these resources in one place (plus a few I pinned but didn't use).

Propaganda posters from WWII. Here's a post from our lesson on propaganda a few years ago.

We talked about inflation that day too, come to think of it. And this video is a funny illustration of inflation in Germany before WWII. Want to do more with inflation? This auction we did was SO much fun! And...here are a whole bunch more kind-of-related Economics links and resources.

A short video about Adolf Hitler

Biographical information on Adolf Hitler, including pictures

A rare recording of Hitler speaking in his normal voice--very interesting

Some interactive maps of the war: these about the "blitzkrieg" portion of the war, this one, and this one (time lapse)

These "Horrible Histories" clips can be pretty funny. This is kind of an overview of WWII.

Video about the plot to assassinate Hitler, and more about the man who attempted it. Every time I learn about this I wonder how things could have turned out differently!

***
After the war, there is much more fascinating history, of course! Here's a post about my visit to and thoughts about the Berlin Wall. Also some book recommendations about the Berlin Wall and East Germany under communism (Stastiland and The Collapse were both great.)

But my single favorite post-war story is probably this one, about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' "Dutch Potato Project." A beautiful beginning to a discussion about forgiveness and reconciliation.

And of course, we always love to talk about our friend Gail Halvorsen, the Berlin "Candy Bomber," and another example of how one person doing good can help improve the lives of countless people.

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!

Thomas Jefferson's Vanilla Ice Cream

Did you know Thomas Jefferson is the source of the first known American recipe for vanilla ice cream? Yet another reason to love the man. Daisy's birthday fell on one of the days we studied Thomas Jefferson, so we made Jefferson's homemade vanilla ice cream to celebrate. You can find the recipe (along with modern updates/instructions) here.

Yum! (And here's my favorite vanilla ice cream recipe too, just for fun.)

Speaking of Thomas Jefferson, the children also really liked it when I let them sign their own names to the copy of the Declaration of Independence we have. This would be a great time to use a quill pen, which we didn't do this time, but I did let them use my fountain pen, which they thought was very exciting!

We concur. :)

Betsy Ross's five-pointed stars

I know Betsy Ross is one of those semi-apocryphal characters that books always feel inclined to give you caveats about ("of course we have no proof that Betsy Ross did indeed make the flag, or even knew George Washington" etc etc)—but come on, how can we leave out Betsy Ross and the flag from a study of the American Revolution? I love her story and have ever since I was little. And there were some great pictures books about her at the library.

Anyway, my favorite little detail (yes, yes, probably also apocryphal) is that George Washington wanted 6-pointed stars because he thought they'd be easier to sew. So little Betsy got out her scissors and showed him how she could cut out a five-pointed star with just one snip! Awesome, right?

Here are the instructions for how to do it yourself. Or this animation is good too.

I thought it was cute how pleased with themselves the children were after mastering this simple little thing. It IS pretty cool!

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!

Revolutionary War Unit Schedule and Lesson Plan

Hello! It has been a lovely summer and I'm finally ready to post about our Revolutionary War Unit! We started this unit at the end of June and finished at nearly the end of August--it would have been over a couple weeks sooner but with the usual scout and choir camps, 4-H club meetings (the children do summer 4-H Club with their cousins and grandma), and holidays, it stretched out a bit longer. As is my custom, I'll be back-dating this unit to align more with when we were actually doing things.

We loved learning about the Revolutionary War! There was so much to learn and discuss. We were all sad to see it come to an end.

A few links to general information:

Some colonial-era recipes http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodcolonial.html

These lesson plans are wonderful--there are 6 of them dealing with the Revolutionary War. We used some of her ideas, but it was helpful to read through her lessons even when I didn't use them specifically. Here is the first one, and there are links to the other 6 at the bottom of the linked page. http://iijuan12.squidoo.com/king-george-iii-patrick-henry-and-samuel-adams-lesson-plan

Here is my Pinterest board for this Revolutionary War Unit