Saturday evening we had our Tapestry of Grace Year 3 Unit 1 Celebration.  The theme was Napoleon's World.  This is our little time machine in the foyer, where guests enter a different historical era. 

We had a major costume glitch right before my parents arrived.  My son's boot busted!  I had to grab my sewing kit and sew it back together while my husband took my parents into the garage to show off his cabinetry project for the schoolroom.  Finally, the boot was fixed and the show could go on! 

My son had the idea to begin the unit celebration with a small skit.  Hmmmm, I think he was inspired by the DVD we had watched the other night, Jefferson and Adams: A Stage Play!  On the left is my daughter, playing Lizzy Bennet from Pride and Prejudice. She is reading the astonishing letter she has received from Mr. Darcy.  On the right is my son.  Can you guess who he is???  No, not Napoleon as many have predicted!  lol  While in Colonial Williamsburg, he purchased a bosun whistle.  He insisted on being someone in Year 3 Unit 1 who used this whistle.  It took a few weeks to find someone, but we finally discovered a fascinating man who probably used this.  My son portrayed Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry who won a famous naval battle on Lake Erie in the War of 1812. (And my son was elated when he learned that the  Marquis de Lafayette visited the scene of this battle on his Grand Tour of America in 1824!)  He is doing paperwork at his desk.  I portrayed Thomas Jefferson's daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph.  She was an interesting lady.  She was homeschooled in the classics by her father, then she lived in France at the on-set of the French Revolution when her father was Minister to France.   While living at Monticello with her father, husband and children, she homeschooled her own children while running the household.  After a few moments of our skit, my son stood up and blew his bosun's whistle to announce the opening.  Then each of us introduced ourselves.  After I introduced myself, I invited everyone into the dining room to enjoy some food from the Monticello kitchen.

Jefferson had some of his cooks professionally trained in Paris.  The kitchen at Monticello was specially built to accomodate French cooking with the delicate sauces and slow cooking of meats, making them more tender than the quick cooking over an open hearth.  The kids and I spent all day Saturday cooking.  The kids got to learn lots of French cooking techniques. (I was very thankful for my training in years past from watching French cook Jacques Pepin on tv! It allowed me to understand some of the techniques.) We used a cookbook I had purchased while we were at Monticello a few months ago, Dining at Monticello. 

This is a French inspired recipe for asparagus marinated with herb vinaigrette.

 We pretended this was a Virginia Ham.  There is none to be found in Texas.  I had some Virgninia Ham while we were on vacation a few months ago and it is delicious. It is very salty, but a little bit of ham goes a long way in flavor.  I meant to buy an actual Virginia Ham while we were on vacation for this unit celebration but I forgot. 

 This is a salad with edible flowers.  I had my daughter dress the salad and I think she got carried away!  LOL  It looks more like a bouquet! =) There are several types of gourmet lettuce underneath the flowers!

There was fresh herbal vinaigrette to use to dress the salad.

This is baked macaroni with cheese...much different from versions of today.

We also had Vermicelli Soup.

We added homemade pasta to the soup.  Here is some extra drying for future recipes!  It is called Nouilly a maccaroni.  There is actually a copy of this recipe in Jefferson's own penmanship today. 

My daughter also made fresh lemonade.  That was delicious!  After a terrific dinner, we served the dessert course.  There was homemade chocolate ice cream, made to recreate the texture Jefferson would have known.  It was decadently chocolate!   

We also had Snow Eggs!  These were delicious!!!  The white is poached meringue with a subtle hint of orange.  They are laying in a delectable custard sauce. 

 After dinner, we were treated to an entertainment of music.  My daughter read the historical background of "The Star Spangled Banner." 

Then my son played the tune on his fife.

He was very military in his manner...

Then my son gave an introduction to the "Ode to Joy", which my daughter played on the piano.  After that, my daughter read the historical background to "Angels From the Realms of Glory", which my son played on the piano.

After enjoying the music, my son shared his Lewis and Clark journal.  He gave some background on the expedition.  He pretended to have been on the expedition as well, and wrote journal entries for the different things he saw.  He enjoyed this project immensely.  I  couldn't stop him from researching and writing! He'd say, "But Mom, I want to do this animal too!" A teacher/mom's dream!  He wrote an introduction to his journal, after he finally ran out of time for more entries.  He bound all the papers together by stitching them and then glued on a suede cover.  

He chose one entry to share, which was about the buffalo.

Afterwards, everyone oohed and ahhed over his other pictures too.  Here is the frisky Eastern Grey Squirrel...

a stately bald eagle...

the ferocious grizzly bear...

the abundant salmon...

and the Clark's Nutcracker, many of which we actually got to see on previous vacations to Colorado.

Then my daughter read her literary analysis paper on Pride and Prejudice.  She had never done a literary analysis paper before.  This was her favorite book of the entire unit and she fully understood the literary terms to use to describe the plot.    

After that, she gave a recitation of Lizzy's reaction to Darcy's letter.  She actually had it all memorized. She was using Darcy's letter as a prop.

Then my son gave his Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry speech.  This man was a low ranking naval officer, who felt cheated that he didn't get to sail on the open sea where all the action was.  Instead, he was stuck on the quiet backwaters of Lake Erie.  

Well, the War of 1812 came to Lake Erie.  He hoisted the flag he had made, bearing the final words of a good friend who had died in a previous naval battle. 

Even though America had a tiny navy and were fighting England, who ruled the seas, the Americans won the battle of Lake Erie against all odds.  Afterwards, Perry wrote this letter...

to Brigadier General William Henry Harrison...

and sealed it.

My daughter acted as courier and took it to Dad, who opened it and read it. 

Then my daughter explained the history of some of the art projects they did, like these silhouettes.

Then she domonstrated how to do quilling.  It is a simple matter of wrapping a piece of paper around a quill.

My daughter created this picture...

and my son made Thanksgiving dinner...

Finally, my son read his comparison/contrast paper on George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte.  At the end, my son explained that Napoleon could not come as a guest to our unit celebration, because he was in exile.

Over the course of the nine weeks of our unit, we read many books and watched DVDs, most of which referred to Napoleon's influence in some way. My children are amazed that there is no getting away from Napoleon! Before Tapestry of Grace, we used a history textbook where we learned about Napoleon in a few paragraphs and never realized what an influence (for better or worse) that he had on the world.  Even this week as we open our unit 2 books, we have found Napoleon's influence on the pages, even though he had been dead for several years.  He really stirred things up while he was alive.  And from previewing Unit 2, it appears that remnants of his influence, and those that are forthcoming with his nephew, will continue to create quite a stir! 

These are my daughter's rhetoric literature, government and fine arts books.  In literature we studied Pride and Prejudice.  We also learned about the Romantic influence on selected portions of Goethe's Faust and early nineteenth century poetry and short stories.   We studied poetry written by James MacPherson, Sir Walter Scott, Thomas Percy, William Blake, Robert Burns, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats.  We read short stories by Washington Irving, including "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Wrinkle."  We both were surprised to find the scene of the final demise of British Major Andre from the American Revolution in  "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."  That brought lots of emotions since we remembered how personable he was but he did aid Benedict Arnold in treason.  She also read interesting stories by Francois-Rene de Chateaubraind and Alexander Pushkin.  Whew!  It was a lot of work but she is learning to appreciate the classics and how to understand the underlying themes and meanings.

In government she has studied several original source documents.  We have compared the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and the Bill of Rights to France's Declaration of the Rights of Man and Code Napoleon.  Additionally we have studied the constitutionality of the Alien and Sedition Acts.  Furthermore, we have analyzed Marbury v. Madison, McCulloch v. Maryland and Gibbons v. Ogden.  Also, we have read Volume I Part I of Frenchman's Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America.  

These books include the Dialectic history books that both kids read, in addition to the Dialectic literature books my son read.

We had fun shopping for fruits and vegetables like the ones that Thomas Jefferson grew at Monticello.  We'll be trying out lots of new vegetable recipes in the next week!  Most interesting, we discovered that Jefferson even had spicy peppers from San Antonio, Texas that had been sent to him by a captain!

While at Monticello, I had gotten some seeds from Thomas Jefferson's gardens.  We are looking forward to growing them next spring and reliving memories of our Year 3 Unit 1 studies.