The Lighting of a Fire!: Part Thirty-two--From Sea to Shining Sea 2004-2005 part 1

IDEA

Sometime in the early months of 2004 Autumn Heather was looking at the American Girl doll website. She shared with us some of the historical things she was learning on this site. It seemed so fun that I casually mentioned how it might be fun to have an American Girl school year. Immediately Autumn Heather and Giselle latched onto that idea and wouldn't let it go! I thought I would be schooling all alone that year, so I moved forward with the idea.

I used to wait for the opening day of school to reveal the theme for the year, but the girls knew about it from the start.

THE ADVENTURE

The official name of the school year is:

From Sea to Shining Sea: American History through the eyes of Eight American Girls

I drew this mind map, though it's really only a map,

since the components are not sequential but geographical.

Even though I used the ideas of the American Girl (AG) dolls, I used only the framework of their places and times in American history. Each AG doll had little books which told the story of the girl and her time and place in American history. In these books all the girls are nine years old when their stories begin, but turn ten the next year. Giselle was nine when we began this school year and they turned ten the next year also.

Interestingly all the stories begin in a year that ends in "4" and end in the next year which ends in "5" -- 1764-5, 1774-5, etc. And not coincidentally, though I didn't plan this, we began this school year in 2004 and ended it in 2005.

I didn't realize it when I began to write the school year that almost all of the American Girl storybooks are pretty shallow or pathetic in both language and good morals. Thankfully the Welcome to (Name of American Girl Doll)'s World books were a great resource and fun to read that year, and all of them were at our library.

RATIONAL/YEAR KEY POINT

BROAD versus DEEP

Instead of going deep into a subject we would be making a broad sweep of history. All the EPIC Adventure years before this one contained five components or less. This one had eight. I knew we were going to be rushing through the year and that it would be a feat to get everything done, but Autumn Heather and Giselle didn't want to leave any doll (time period) out, and neither did I. In the end it was Autumn Heather who pushed us to finish every component, even when I didn't think we were ready to move on.

Here are the names of the components, the girl in each one, her place and time in history:

Blossom as the Rose

*Kaya *1764 *Nez Perce Girl *Northwest

Let Freedom Ring

*Felicity *1774 *Colonial Girl *Williamsburg, VA

On the Santa Fe Trail

*Josefina *1824 *Hispanic Girl *Santa Fe, NM

Roll along Covered Wagon

*Kirsten *1854 *Swedish Girl *Minnesota Territory

Rally ‘round the flag

*Addy *1864 *Escaped Slave Girl *Philadelphia, PA

Sister Suffragette

*Samantha *1904 *Victorian Girl *Mount Bedford, NY

Make it do or do without

*Kit 1934 *Depression era Girl *Cincinnati, OH

On the Home Front

*Molly *1944 *WW II Era Girl * Jefferson, IL

TOPICS
Every component had the same four topics, each one related to the girl we were studying at the time: 1) home and surrounding areas, 2) homemaking skills, 3) education, 4) significant events in American history

SONG

I did not write our school year song, but instead bought and used the American Girl song, The Best that I Can Be. It has a catchy tune and has some good thoughts, though it isn't a masterpiece. It still brings wonderfully fond memories though. You can listen to it here.

GROUP

Originally I thought we would being doing this school year by ourselves but several families joined us. That summer Symbria Patterson and her daughter came with Autumn Heather, Giselle and me to the Cedar City Shakespeare festival. While we drove together we talked about our homeschool plans. Symbria said she would stay with the Thomas Jefferson Education model. I told her how EPIC Adventures were the perfect way to inspire a love of learning in a most significant way. By the time we got to Cedar City she was ready to join us in this school year.

BIG CHANGES

There were a few things we did this year which changed our homeschool ever afterwards:

Symbria introduced large-scale field trips and lots of them. When she joined me in EPIC Adventures she told me that she didn't know much about writing curriculum, but she was queen of field trips. This year we had an average of 3 field trips per month, and I only planned one of those for the entire year.

I got a digital camera. Having the freedom to take hundreds of photos helped us document and remember our year in a way that was impractical before this.

I introduced journals of discovery. (more below)

GETTING READY

Symbria and her husband planned and put together our opening day, which centered on the first chronological American Girl--Kaya. The Pattersons set up an Indian village on Symbria's father's land in the middle of a desert place near a stream. We were all to come in Indian costumes and spend the night in teepees. Autumn Heather made her costume, while Giselle and I wore costumes from our 1991-2 California Campfires school year.

The Saturday before our opening day Brother Reyes brought me a salmon. A few times a year he brought our family fish he had caught in rivers or the ocean, but he had never brought us a salmon before. It was miraculously perfect for Kaya's world, since she was an Indian from the Columbian River area whose family lived on salmon. (She and all the American girls are completely fictional, but they all have stories).

WELCOME TO KAYA'S WORLD - Nez Perce girl, Northwest 1764

I revealed the year poster, etc., to the girls in the morning and by the afternoon we were on our way to Kaya's world dressed in our indian garb. I put our song CD into the van CD player and we sang our school song all the way there.

Several families of mostly girls

Symbria and Lynn truly created Kaya's world for us.

Everything modern was eschewed, even cooking tools. Symbria cooked the salmon in leaves in a pit, along with all these veggies too. It was heavenly.

The next day I, dressed as Sacagawea, visited the village and shared my story of aiding Lewis and Clark to the Nez Perce tribe near the Columbia river. The Lewis and Clark story comes years after Kaya's 10th birthday, but this visitor was important to our school group because she introduced something significant in the Lewis and Clark expedition: their journals.

Sacagawea told how William Clark wrote the account of their journey, while Meriwether Lewis drew the things the animals, plants and land formations they saw. These journals were the most important cargo that they took back to Thomas Jefferson. The journey of Lewis and Clark was called the Journey of Discovery.

This year the students would have their own journals of discovery for documenting their journey that year, just like Lewis and Clark. These journals were just fancy life books, with a fancy name. At the end of that year one of the mothers told how journals of discovery were the best thing she added to homeschooling. She said that when relatives and friends asked her children what they were doing in school, the kids ran and got their journals of discovery, instead of their binders. Each child's journal became a precious cargo in the adventure.

The children also made gathering bags--pouches to hold their journals. Sacagawea gave each child a Sacagawea dollar to put in their journals too.

Sacagawea and 14 little Indians

The title page of my journal. I used clear vinyl and two pages to hold my coin.

Autumn Heather's are all packed up, but I have some photos

from a few of her journals of discovery.

Hal IV and Chase

Hal IV and Chase didn't participate in this school adventure, but they did go on a few field trips with us, and Chase came most of the time. They continued taking scholar classes and attended Face to Face with Greatness seminars hosted by George Wythe College. Hal IV and Chase also attended Youth for America camps and Constitutional convention events hosted by GWC.

Hal IV and Chase helped out at the first GWC gala in the fall of 2004

Chase at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Museum and Library--we went there two days after opening day to see a Lewis and Clark exhibit. This was our first time here.

Giselle drawing in her journal of discovery at the Ronal Reagan Library.
Her gathering bag is also by her side.

IMMERSION

After many field trips we stayed the night at the Patterson home because I was helping with the GWC gala too. From the very start of the year Lynn helped the girls put together environments that matched the period we were studying. During our first component Lynn helped the kids make teepees and the moms made dinner and sent out food to them on Indian-esque wooden dishes.

A post-field trip dinner at the Patterson home.

Lynn Patterson gave us these 8-foot long poles so that Autumn Heather could make her own teepee at home. She tried to use all our animal-skin-patterned blankets.

She moved the trampoline out of the pit and set up the home she lived in during our month-long study of American Indians. She didn't ever want it to end!

Autumn Heather braved the nights outside alone with our dog Cinnamon.
Giselle slept outside sometimes too, but I don't think Autumn Heather slept
inside our home one time during the month of September.

We had other Indian costumes, so the girls' friends also joined in the fun.

The girls continually added to their outfits and improved their living quarters.
You can see the 'fire' Autumn Heather rigged up from a utility light and some wood.

How many times have a heard a child tell me they wished they were homeschooled too? Yet when people see photos of my children they say they look like they're just playing.

The girls were really learning and living an American Indian experience, versus filling out a worksheet on Indians and making a construction paper teepee. Susan Kovalik calls this "immersion": we can't go back in time and live with the Nez Perce Indians of 1764, but we can create an environment similar to theirs to feel what it might have been like.

Autumn Heather read books about how the Indians lived and set up their home to be as close as possible to it. They girls wove their own baskets from our honeysuckle vines, ground acorns, and made and ate jerky and pemmican. At night I read to them the story of Lewis and Clark and other related stories, while we snuggled in the teepee.

Really, how many elementary age children, much less adults, know what pemmican is? I didn't know. But Autumn Heather and Giselle might never forget it because they didn't just read about it in a book, and then answer questions about it, they actually ate it in the context of living like Indians. (Pemmican is a mixture of berries and dried meat bits and fat all mushed up together in the first American energy bar).

Autumn Heather and Giselle

Other field trips

Sketching Indian artifacts in journals of discovery at the Southwest Museum

A day of Indian adventures, including seeing real-live buffalo

(yes I know they're bison)

WELCOME TO FELICITY'S WORLD - Colonial girl, Virginia 1774

For our opening day of Felicity we went back to

the Ronald Reagan Museum for a Revolutionary war reenactment.

A nationally known Benjamin Franklin expert and impersonator

gave us a tour of Independence Hall at Knott's Berry Farm.

At the Hartvigson home we had a 'tea' party and learned about the women who drank tea without sugar in protest of certain taxes. We pledged to be like them.

Colonial Dancing

How to get your kids to polish the silver:

tell them it's something a colonial girl would do!

Hollywood Hills Forest Lawn, with "Boston's North Church,"

complete with replicas of the famous, "two if by sea" lanterns, in the background.

Giselle, Haley, Autumn Heather

Chase at Forest Lawn

After Forest Lawn we headed to Symbria's home for a colonial dinner and dancing.
Chase and Symbria chatting

I would have put the kids at this table, with the unbreakable Armetale dishes,

but she had the girls sit at the Thomas Jefferson reproduction china and crystal table

Autumn Heather loved Felicity so much that she had

a colonial party for her 12th birthday.

WELCOME TO JOSEFINA'S WORLD - Hispanic girl, New Mexico 1824

For many of our EPIC Adventures, the kids have one costume they wear throughout the year. This year the girls wanted eight costumes--one for each time period. Autumn Heather made most of her costumes, which she usually designed to match the American Girls dolls of the same eras. Giselle and I made some of her costumes or found substitutes from our homeschool costume supply in the garage.

Giselle sews her Josefina skirt