Printing Press Museum Field Trip

As I was thinking about the Printing Press, I had a memory of visiting some museum in Provo with my mom (multiple times, even) where there was a model of the printing press and some moveable type. I looked it up—the Crandall Printing Museum. But it was gone, closed in the last few years sometime! I was sad.

But then my mom did some asking around and found that the Crandall had resurfaced in Alpine! Someone bought the stuff and was resurrecting the museum. They have a ton of cool historical items in their collection, like a Gutenberg Bible and the only working model of the Gutenberg Press! They also have a bunch of things related to the original printing of the Book of Mormon back in Joseph Smith's time, including a model of the Grandin Press. 

It turned out that the museum wasn't yet officially open in Alpine (the grand opening was coming up in a few weeks), but I got in touch with someone who worked there and she agreed to give us a tour! My mom came with us since she had so many fond memories of the original Crandall. :)

I was excited about the kids seeing the printing press model, but honestly, the tour was way better than I was even expecting. The lady who led it was interesting and fun, and I hadn't anticipated that we'd get to see every step of the process—including the way they poured lead into mold to make the moveable type! She actually showed us how that worked—heated the lead, poured it, and made some pieces of type for us to look at! It was fascinating!

See the little trail of liquid lead that hardened instantly into a wobbly line on the stone?

I was happy that Malachi ended up coming with us on this field trip, because he was fascinated and asked a million questions, and even ended up talking for a long time with the lady after the tour was over. They became great friends, apparently. She even let him take home one of the pieces of type as a souvenir!

There was definitely an art to the way they pushed the ink onto the type forms with a leather inkball. If you don't coat the whole form (it has a more precise name, but I've forgotten it…a case, maybe? a galley?) evenly with ink, you get empty spots on the finished page, as you can see we did above! Daisy and Junie got to help put the ink onto the type.

You also had to be very precise in the way you lined up the type over the page. Often they would do two printings for a page (if they wanted some of the text in red, for instance) and there was no room for error in pressing the second group down into exactly the right spot among the earlier group of words.

Malachi helped screw down the press mechanism to push the inked plates firmly down onto the blank page!

And then he hung up our finished pages to dry on a drying line!

And here is the Gutenberg Bible we got to see. I've only ever seen another in the British Library. They are so beautiful! I wish I had my own copy (in English, of course) :)

It was a wonderful field trip; one of the best. Just the sort of thing we love doing. I would totally go back and pay for another tour, now that the museum is up and running and they charge a fee for tours. We'd like  to do the tour where you learn about the Book of Mormon printing too!

Here's the information about museum tours if you, too, would like to go there!

https://www.thecrandall.org/tours

Potato Stamp Printing

It's been a long time…maybe since I was in grade school…since I've done potato printing! I might have done it with bars of soap when I was a Cub Scouts leader or something. Anyway, it's a classic art project every child should try at least once, don't you think? It's a great way to show the printing process and solidify the idea of how images and text transfer backwards onto the page.

We didn't do anything fancy! Just simple shapes in either positive or negative space. And tempura paint for the "ink."

I loved the pretty pictures the children printed with their stamps!

J. [hearts] piggies!

Book Unit and Lettering Samples

Click to enlarge!

I wanted to do a Books and Authors unit for Malachi's sake this year, because he's been so into writing lately (see here! and that isn't even his first novel—it's about his fourth. He is getting really good!) and it seemed like a fun "spine" into which many different areas could be connected! It turned out really interesting and fun. 

We started with an overview of the history of writing, then moved into paper making, bookmaking, bookbinding, printing, the printing press, libraries, etc.

Then we moved on to types of writing and story, and ended with an overview of a bunch of different genres, reading representative stories and, at night, watching a typical movie from each genre. So much fun!! I had Malachi teach us a class on story structure and it was amazing. He is a wonderful teacher! He made it so interesting and accessible. It made me resolve to have him teach more often!

Clementine loves to come sit on Malachi's lap while he's writing. He says, "Do you want to be my little helper?" and she happily snuggles in with him and pushes buttons and points at things and asks questions and just generally makes herself "useful." Ha! So cute.

We've been gradually adding built-in shelves to this room since we moved in, and it was fun that during this unit this whole wall got completed. We call this room the Library and now it really feels like one!

I asked my dear friend (and writing partner) Rachael to do a lesson for us over FaceTime as our Guest Author. It was so good! She's the best. She's written three amazing books about her ancestors, as well as our book, of course!

We did an activity where we learned about fonts and fancy lettering styles, and then tried to learn/copy some of them ourselves. The girls loved this! Marigold, especially, loves fancy calligraphy. I loved what she came up with!

Look at the tiny little bunnies dancing around that "Eve"!

Junie's beautiful lettering

Junie's Pig Alphabet (Pigphabet?)

Daisy worked a long time to get the letters in her name exactly right! They look beautiful!

Sam's Art Unit

Usually between Christmas and New Years, when Sam is mostly home from work, he teaches a unit to the kids on something he's interested in. This year he taught a general Art Unit. I didn't get many pictures, and I don't have his lesson plan, but he talked about a bunch of design principles and Gestalt theory and how these principles contribute to a pleasing work of art. These are just some pictures of the notes the kids took and some drawings they did, to remind us that we did this unit at all!

The kids love learning from Sam and several of them want to be artists, so this was a really fun unit for them!

Water Hikes

We had the most beautiful Fall ever! It came later than usual because we had…hmm, now I'm forgetting. Maybe because we had a lot of hot weather and it didn't cool down at all until October? I think that's what it was. Anyway, the fall colors in the canyon are often good in September and basically gone by October. But this year the leaves were amazing in the mountains all through October! It was wonderful. I wanted to hike to several water…features as part of our unit, some we'd seen before and some we hadn't. We took the younger kids on some of the hikes and left them home with Sam for one of them. It seemed each hike was more beautiful than the last!

I put more pictures of these glorious hikes on the other blog:

https://light-in-leaves.blogspot.com/2022/11/hot-springs-hike.html

https://light-in-leaves.blogspot.com/2022/10/grotto-falls.html

https://light-in-leaves.blogspot.com/2022/11/gloria-falls-hike.html

but I will post a few of them here as well. Two hikes were to streams/waterfalls and one was to a hot springs.

We've never hiked Gloria Falls before, and we were surprised at how big and impressive the Falls were! I heard they are even bigger in the Spring and would like to see them then too.

By the time we did this hike, it was getting cooler in the mountains, and there was even some ice on the rocks by the Falls!

This was a hike with just the "school kids." These four cuties.

Good hikers, every one of them!

A glorious day!

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The hot springs in Diamond Fork Canyon are nostalgic for me because we went there lots of times when the big boys were young, and I have such vivid memories of playing there with them. I felt like I was seeing the ghosts of our earlier family superimposed over what I was experiencing in the present day!

Gus always reminds me of squishy little Malachi.

Zig was serious and focused and just a tiny bit nervous about getting in. He mostly played that he was a lifeguard. (He's so much like little Sebby!)

And Teddy was just off his own, exploring, daringly climbing around, doing big-kid things, so much like little Abe!

I even have an old picture of a tiny Daisy in this same pool!

Goldie was just a wee mite last time we came. Now she's a beautiful young lady!

And Junie has passed all her sisters up in height!

We found a really great picnic area after our hike, and ate our lunch in maybe the prettiest grove of yellow trees anywhere!

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The hike to Grotto Falls was a treat because Malachi came with us! And then he insisted on carrying the hiking backpack with Clementine in it! What a good boy he is. Everyone is always happy to have Malachi around.

It's a really easy hike to Grotto Falls, barely off the trailhead. And it's fun because there's a little shady cave (grotto?) to play in where the waterfall lands. We brought water shoes so we could wade around a little—though it was tricky getting everyone in and out of their shoes with wet and muddy feet! Next time maybe we should just hike in the water shoes!

Gus is excited

Goldie has duck feet

Poor Gus was sad about something, but forcing a smile here anyway

There is no place I'd rather be in the Fall than hiking through our beautiful mountains. I'm so glad we live close to so many beautiful places, and that the kids and I get to learn and explore together!