The Learning Curve

I Survived The American Revolution, 1776

Full disclaimer: this blog post is coming MONTHS after this book club meeting, so my memory might be a little hazy. What can I say? Life's been busy!

This book is based on the Battle of Brooklyn, which is known as one of the bloodiest battles in the American Revolution. It is also known as the first battle on American soil after the Declaration of Independence was signed.

Several months prior to this battle, the British had been run out of Boston. George Washington anticipated that the British would attack America next by trying to take New York, so the Colonial Army was marched from Boston to New York. British ships begin arriving in New York in July 1776, which is where a the main part of our story is.

Nate, is a young boy who runs away from his Loyalist guardian (Uncle Stortch), catches a ship to NYC, sees the impending war and finds himself amongst Washington's Army as a camp helper.

For our book club meeting, we had 3 main parts: Discussion, Activity/Craft and Snack. However, unlike most meetings, the format of this one was a little different than others. We started with snacks instead of discussion.

SNACK

In my search for themed snack ideas, I ran across a book series in our collection called Colonial American Crafts. The series has books on crafts in the home, village and school. In The Village, were some great craft ideas, but what struck me was the recipe for muffins. I absolutely loved that the recipe came from a Colonial craft inspired book.

It specifically called for cranberries, which are a fruit specific to America. Colonists incorporated them into different uses, including cakes, breads, ink, dyes, etc.

If they had been in season, I would have used them, but despite my best efforts, no local stores could be found that were selling cranberries. Thankfully, blueberries were also a popular colonial fruit. And they were in season. So we used blueberries.

Because these took 20-25 minutes to bake, as soon as kids arrived, we dove into our baking. They were SUPER excited to bake.

All baking supplies were supplied and ready. I had brought a toaster oven from home to bake in, since our library does not have a kitchen. Kids were given gloves to wear as they baked and I stood back to let them take the reins on this project. I only stepped in momentarily when the salt measurement was accidentally tripled.

Our group was right around 5 kids, so our number was perfect for this, with everyone participating.

PDF of recipe below

Activity/Craft

For our craft we made ink and quills, using feathers and blueberries. This idea also came from Colonial American Crafts series, specifically The School book. I'll attach the original recipe to the bottom of this post as well, but I took a fair bit of liberty to adapt this recipe for a library setting.

For starters, the original recipe calls for cranberries, but blueberries can be easily substituted.

The whole concept of this recipe is to heat the berries and crush them to release their color. This is used for ink.

Because there is no stove to heat berries at the library, I brought in a mini crock-pot to let the berries simmer in the heat for the day. This softened them up perfectly.

An hour before book club, I turned off the crock-pot to let them cool and for our activity, they used spoons and strainers to extract the color from the blueberries.

We snipped the tips off our feathers for an angle and practiced our writing.

As a take home, each kid went home with a small vial of ink and their quill. Tip: we used a turkey baster to squeeze ink from our larger container into the small bottle.

These 2 activities were HUGE crowd pleasers and I would definitely repeat these. Yes, they're a mess but totally worth it.

Good luck with your book club planning and hope this helps!

Colonial American Crafts: The Village by Judith Hoffman Corwin BLUEBERRY MUFFIN RECIPE

Colonial American Crafts: The School by Judith Hoffman Corwin INK RECIPE

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