Colonial Times Unit Celebration!!

Last Friday evening we had our unit celebration to mark the end of our studies of the colonial time period. Grandma and Grandpa came over, as well as two families that are good friends of ours. We had a low-key but very fun time.

We had a display table showing some of the things we made during this unit, as well as some of the books we enjoyed reading. There were also several little items we had purchased in Jamestown/Williamsburg last September when we were there during homeschooling week. Then each of the older 4 children shared about some aspect of colonial times and then we ate some colonial desserts (two kinds of cookies made without white sugar - which was very precious in those days and used only for company - and popcorn, which the colonists learned how to make from the indians).

Here are some shots of our display table.



The harpsichord pictured here was something our daughter fell in love with while we were in Williamsburg on vacation last fall. It was the "poor man's piano" during colonial times. We secretly bought her one and saved it for a Christmas gift. While our guests were getting their dessert, our daughter serenaded everyone with lovely harpsichord music!

Our 5 year old son C talked about some of the games colonial children would play. Here he is demonstrating how to play nine pins, the forerunner of our game of bowling.

Our 7 year old son L explained the difference between the flintlock gun and the matchlock gun. He had a picture of each, and was talking about them in this picture.

Our 8 year old son G talked about houses in colonial times. He explained how the early colonists made mud daub houses (we had 4 of them on our display table, made out of shoe boxes with popsicle sticks glued along the sides, painted brown, and grass glued on top for the roofs), and then how they began using bricks. He had several pictures from our trip to Jamestown which he shared.

Our 10 year old daughter G gave a speech on "the starving time" in the Jamestown colony, the winter of 1609-1610. This represented a lot of hard work on her part, as this speech was her writing assignment for several weeks. We started with choosing a topic, then learned how to do research, then wrote out the speech, edited it, rewrote it, and practiced it. Since this was her first speech and I knew she'd be writing/giving others in the future, I gave her the option of not using notecards and instead basically memorizing the speech so that she could give good eye contact to her audience. She gladly chose this option, as the notecards seemed intimidating to her. I was really proud of her, as she was able to look up most of the time, and she even spoke with feeling! (hard for a reserved person to do in front of lots of people)

This last picture shows "pieces of eight" which we purchased in Williamsburg last fall. The colonists were not allowed (by British law) to mint their own money, so they used coins from other countries which they would cut in pieces to represent smaller denominations of money. Eventually the coins were cut into 8 pieces, which is where we get our phrase "two bits" (which equals 25 cents). Isn't that cool to know it dates back to colonial times?!

We had a great time, and have already begun our next unit which deals with the revolutionary war. We love Tapestry of Grace!