Sep. 29, 2009 - Plimoth Thanksgiving and Rembrandt

We had our first history co-op last Friday and it was a Plimoth Thanksgiving dinner.  If you’ve never checked out Plimoth Plantations’ site they have excellent interactive content on the first Thanksgiving.

Our co-op is following Mystery of History III and All American I right now.  We mix them together because there is so much overlap at this point in history.  Once a month we meet and make a meal together based on one of the lessons and do an activity from another lesson.  Each child also makes a presentation from something they’ve studied that has to do with one of the lessons from that month.

For our dinner we did have Turkey and pointed out they would have had wild fowl, fish and shellfish and Venison.  We also had steamed clams.  The Pilgrims probably would have had mostly meat as that’s what was available.  The corn at that time would have been dried so we did make a cornbread “pudding” and a pumpkin “pudding”.  They would not have had sugar by that time and it’s not even certain if the chickens survived.  In my research I found they only had spoons and knives, no forks so we ate without forks as well.

Here’s the pumpkin we modified;

1 cup pumpkin
1/2 cup sugar
2 Tablespoons molasses
2 eggs
2 cups bread or cake crumbs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/2 cup raisins

We microwaved this until set (not sure how long, about 15 minutes?) due to the oven being used by other things.  It obviously has a little sugar and molasses in it but we did want the kids to eat the food and not simply waste it.

Here’s the one we used for Indian pudding, again we did add some sugar.

2 cups milk
1 cup stone-ground cornmeal
2 tablespoons butter, melted
3/4 cup molasses, warmed
4 tablespoons sugar
3 eggs, well beaten
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup raisins
sweetened whipped cream

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Heat milk with cornmeal. Whisk from time to time until thick. Heat molasses and butter, and whisk in sugar.

2. Gradually beat hot cornmeal mixture into beaten egg. Add cinnamon and raisins. Place in 8-inch-diameter glass baking dish or ceramic mixing bowl. Bake for 1 hours, or until top is rounded and set. Serve hot topping with whipped cream, if desired. Makes 4 to 6 servings.

We also talked about how they would have had nuts, and dried berries but there were no potatoes.  They probably had pumpkin and squash but it wouldn’t have been made into a pie.  On another note, there were only 4 grown women to cook it all!

For our activity we chose to focus on Rembrandt and his painting techniques.  We did an activity sheet highlighting 4 techniques.  You can find the instruction and notepage I created here.  The etching one is a little hard to get to turn out but I think it at least gave the kids an idea of the process.

Jul. 27, 2009 - History category

Just wanted to note that I'm starting a new category for History.  Previous to September 27, 2009 anything I've blogged on having to do with history has gone under the category, "Mystery of History" and most of the enteries had to do in fact with that curriculum as that's what we've used.  Now as we're coming to an end of the MOH curriculum we're moving on to and mixing in other curriculums so it makes sense to change my history category to plain old "History".

I note this becuase if you're here looking for MOH you may want to check both the "Mystery of History" category for primarily book I, II and some book III subjects but you may also want to check the plain "History" tab for more book III subjects.

Likewise if you're looking for All American, Truthquest or just history in general you may want to check both categories since I've created many notepages and activities that may work for many curriculums.