Sailing with Christopher Columbus

This year, we're going to be covering 3 aspects of American history. The girls are particularly interested in the American Revolution, so I'm planning to study that with them. But first, I thought it would help to have a bit of background in the colonies, so first we'll study that. But, then I got to thinking that perhaps we should take it back to the explorers of North America. So, we have begun there. We are using Evan Moore history pockets. We used it last year in co-op for our study of the Native Americans and Ruth had so much fun with it, that I decided to use them again for the explorers, colonists and finally the American Revolution. Today we began with Christopher Columbus. We talked about his life and when he lived in relationship to the girls' birth dates. Then, we mapped out his exploration routes and talked about compasses and directions, then finally ended with the food that sailors would have eaten.

The map of Columbus' trips-each trip is highlighted in a different color

The girls made their own compass. Once Grace got done with hers, she proceeded to spin the needle as fast as she could all the while twirling and saying "this compass is going crazy!".

Finally, we made our own hardtack. The kids got to sample it and I had a bite, too. I think ours was not baked long enough because it was quite biscuity and tasty. I am thinking it needed to be a bit dryer.

Our cast of characters: flour, salt, baking powder* and water among other utensils and baking paraphernalia

First, we measured 1c. of flour and added it to our bowl

Next, we added 1/8 tsp of salt and 1/2 tsp of baking powder and stirred.

Next, we added 1/2c of water and stirred again, producing a soft, doughy dough. ;)

Grace prepped the rolling pin by adding a little flour after putting flour on the counter for rolling out our dough

Rolling out the dough

I cut the dough into pieces and then the girls poked them with a toothpick

Our hardtack.

First bites. Despite his sour face, David really liked it (go figure-that boy always likes things that are so weird). He kept saying, "I'm going to have a heart attack!" he really meant, I'm going to go have a hardtack.

In proper sailor fashion, Boo is tapping her hardtack to remove the worms before eating

And Byron is just eating because that boy is ALWAYS hungry.

*after reading up on hardtack, I have come to find that sailors in Columbus' day would not have had what we call hardtack and that true hardtack would not have contained baking powder, simply coarse flour, water and salt. Yum.