They made a battlefield and painted it and we are re-enacting each battle we learn about. It is a great way to remember!
For Lexington, they fired "the shot heard round the world", with 8 colonists dead and 9 wounded and they said Captain Jonas Parker's famous words, "Stand your ground, men. Don't fire unless fired upon. But, if they mean to have war, let it begin here."
Then, for Concord, the British burned the town because they couldn't find the munnitions. The colonists defended their town the best they could and the British got scared and retreated. In fact, 6 British soldiers went up to an old woman who was weeding near a pond and surrendered to her.
After that, a popular saying was, "If an old woman can capture 6 redcoats, how many will England need to send to conquer all the colonies?"
The kids and I took turns pretending to be the British retreating and the colonists attacking the British while hiding in the woods. We talked about how the British fought-in formation and they were bewildered at the way the colonists fought. They'd hide and ambush. Plus, the British felt it wasn't the way gentleman should fight.
So, some of us marched in formation while being picked off by the "colonists" and then we switched. It was definitely more fun to hide around the house and shoot at the "British." We used Jonah's nerf dart guns.
They also re-enacted the battle of Trenton and Washington's troops crossing the Delaware.
Jonah told Hannah when they do Bunker Hill, she can be the British army because his colonists are going to "whoop her butt."
LOL.
Our reading this week has been from books about Ben Franklin, Nathaneal Greene & John Paul Jones.
We did a fun thing I've never heard of before. It's called a character sketch. We took a piece of paper and I found a graphic of Ben Franklin and centered it on the paper in Microsoft Word. Printed it off and we then did our "sketch' of Franklin. I started doing the writing, but then Hannah asked to take over. They just recalled everything they knew about Franklin and for each thing, we wrote it in different color pencils all over the paper. Each bit of info was written in a different angle-kind of like a patchwork. With all they knew about him, they quickly filled the paper up. Next time, we'll use bigger paper. Then, we talked about how easy it would be to write a report based on what we had written and then adding more to each fact to expound on it.
Aside from the Revolution, this week has been packed full. We only left the house for piano lessons and gym class during the weekdays, but our days were so full of doing school and trying to keep up with the house and cooking, etc.
We're also listening to a book on tape called Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher. What a wonderful, beautiful book. I highly recommend it. Here's a little excerpt:
(she was telling Betsy how many houses still have sundials etched into their windows-it was just a deep scratch at the place where the sun was highest for noon time)
" Let's see if I can come anywhere near the time now. She looked at it hard and said, I guess it's half-past four. She glanced back into the kitchen at the clock and said, Oh pshaw! It's ten minutes past five! Now my grandmother could have told that within five minutes, just by the place of the shadow. I declare! Sometimes it seems to me that every time a new piece of machinery comes into the door some of our wits fly out at the window!"
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