We are so enjoying our American Revolution Unit. I could read about this forever and not get tired of it. The kids are really into it, too. We finished reading The Reb and the Redcoats (Constance Savery) and it was hard to close it. We were all sad that the story ended. You know how sometimes a book seems like a good friend? This was one of those books. We all wanted it to keep going.
This book led us to a couple rabbit trails. One was to learn more about Major John Andre. Here is "The Ballad of Major Andre." The other was to listen to a song called "The World Turned Upside Down."
The tune was so fast we couldn't sing the words to it. But, we enjoyed the tune and found ourselves humming it throughout the day. One of the main characters in the book (Uncle Laurence) whistled this a lot throughout the book. Jonah tried to whistle it.
Another really fun thing we did was to make wood-nibs. They got sticks, whittled one end to a point and used bottles of ink we had from a recent project to write. They were able to write surprisingly well! They also made blotters and found that they did need them. Hannah remembered how we made old looking paper last year for the Early Settlers unit. So, they cut paper around the edges, crumbled them into balls, smoothed them out and took wet tea bags and wiped it all over the paper and then let them dry.
After it was dry, they spent much of their free time writing a newspaper with articles in it about the Revolutionary War. I was surprised at some of the things they have remembered that we've been studying. I was even more thrilled when Jonah got up early one morning and started doing it. He brought me a piece of paper and asked me to write down the spelling for Philadelphia, General Braddock, Lexington and a few others. This boy is making me so proud-he is my late reader and writer and I kept to the premise of not pushing him for fear of causing burn-out or distate for reading. It really did work. I wanted him to love reading and he does! He's still in the early reading phase, but 2 days ago he read a book about the minute men all by himself out loud to us. Not only did he read it well, but he was excited reading it-his eyes kept getting wide and he'd stop and interject his opinion here and there. I almost cried!! It was a beautiful thing.
A neat thing is that I declared 2 days to be Stamp Act day, so they had to pay me 2 cents for each paper they printed on and I put a little stamp at the bottom of each paper. I just happened to have a stamper with a tiny crown on it, so I said it was King George's crown.
Hannah quickly got into the spirit of rebellion about having to pay to use paper-especially with all the drawing she does. LOL
We also did research on Molly Pitcher, which was fascinating! Here is a poem about her, too. We have a lap book we are doing and are enjoying putting it together. We're also note-booking this unit. There is a ton of fascinating stuff in this unit.
And we did research on Betsy Ross and put her in the lapbook, too.
Other things: We found all our Christmas books and this morning we're going to wrap them all in wrapping paper. We'll put all of them in the book basket and then when it's time for a Christmas book, they get to pick a "present", open it and I'll read it. I got this idea from the Konos eloop and love it!
Hannah had her girls group yesterday afternoon. They made beaded Christmas ornaments and went sledding, had hot chocolate and cookies.
Jonah was in on all this, too, but the girls didn't mind.
Next week is the Christmas program that our HS group is putting on for the Nursing Home. Hannah is going to play a piano piece, Jonah is going to have a part in the Nativity play and we're all going to sing carols at the end. I was talking to the lady that set this up last night and she told me her dd told her that Hannah likes to knit & sew and so she offered to have Hannah in a little sewing class she has at her home on Tuesdays. She said she does it as a Titus 2 ministry. Isn't this neat? I didn't get the chance to tell Hannah last night as there were people here to butcher a deer and it was kind of crazy. But, I'm sure she'll be thrilled.
Speaking of deer, my dh still hasn't gotten one!! He and Jonah went hunting this morning and I am so praying they finally get one!
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