NC History - Charlotte Hawkins Brown & Civil Rights

I'm still playing a little bit of catch-up and will soon post our vacation.  (Still haven't uploaded all of the pictures - yes, I'm slow.  Its been that kind of week.  Slow.)

In February, we decided to cover Civil Rights and famous African Americans from North Carolina.  As always, we had a pair of moms teaching the class.  The first activity involved the children drawing a slip of paper and reading it.  Each slip had a law from a state regarding the differing treatment of people of color.  After reading them all and talking about some of them, the children were then encouraged to make a poster designed to help change opinions on one of the laws.  They did a great job with them.  After making them, they each took turns presenting them too.  

In the second activity, we talked about Famous African Americans from NC.  Again, each person drew a slip and tried to act out their person.  Some were easier than others to guess and I didn't get many photos of this activity.  We also discussed what it meant to be "from" NC - did that mean you were born here, but didn't really live here long or perhaps someone that was born elsewhere, but moved to NC and considered it home.

For our field trip, we visited two different sites.  This was not done on the same day as the class, but occurred two weeks after the class.  The first site that we visited was the Charlotte Hawkins Brown State Historic Site.  You can read more about it here.  There are also teacher materials located at this site for those interested.

We were ready to start our day and of course I wanted to snap a few photos.  This little one with a mind of her own!  LOL  (Yes, always a mind of her own!)

Group photo.  Such a fun group too.  :-)

We started our tour in the visitor center.  We saw a movie on the history of this site.  In short, Charlotte Hawkins Brown started a school for young African American students in 1902 when she was just 19 years old!  She was amazing!  Read more about her here.

After exploring inside, it was time to tour the grounds.  I lagged a little behind because I had a helper wanting to push the stroller.

This was the dormitory for boys.

It was a gorgeous day and just perfect for our tour.  I had been afraid the rain might spoil it, but thankfully it came through earlier in the day.  Aren't the campus grounds lovely?

I'm pretty sure I have a photo of another little person running on this path when we were here about 7 years ago.

This was the campus dining hall.  There is a great little book detailing the manners and expectations of behavior of the students on campus.  It was strict!  Manners do matter, though I'm not sure you would always know that by observing a meal at our house.  LOL

This is the girls dormitory.  What I wanted to share that was one of the best parts of our tour - our guide. She was a student here before the school closed.  As was her mother who also worked at the school while she attended.  Her grandparents also attended this school.  How incredibly cool it was to hear about the school from someone who experienced it first hand.  She is a treasure!

The school closed not many years after Dr. Brown died.  The transition of leadership had some troubles and the final blow came when the main building burned to the ground.  Sad to see such a wonderful school close.

Two little cuties!

The last stop on our tour was the Canary House where Dr. Brown lived.  We found the house to be a bit deceiving as it is much larger on the inside than it appears from the outside.  It is a beautiful home!

I just love shots like this with my children mixed in with history.  Kind of like taking a step back and experiencing it themselves.  Its really what I hope for when we take these trips.  I want them to learn from and appreciate our past so that they can make good choices when facing things in the future.  History is such a fascinating subject - its stories.  Stories of people's lives.

While we were in the house, Eliana borrowed my camera.  This is what  historic home looks like from her perspective.

I love staircases like this - open and interesting.  I also really like doors.

Another group shot inside the main parlor of the house.

Another shot of the home, but can you find Eliana?  She is off exploring on her own by now.  Have you found her?  Check out the door on the little porch area on the left side of the house (left as we are looking at the picture).

We stayed for a picnic lunch on the site.  It was a very windy day, but nice nonetheless.

This was our next stop.  The Greensboro Historical Museum was about 15 minutes away so it worked well to combine these stops.  We visited here because we thought there would be a scavenger hunt on AA history here.  It wasn't quite all that we had hoped, but we still enjoyed the museum.  They have done a lot of renovating since the last time that we were here and it really is a great museum!

The museum had a lot of exhibits there were interactive.

I tried to keep someone occupied and contained with the iPad.  It didn't work for long.

This was an interesting activity.  You read a situation and then decided how you would choose to respond.  You then slid the question under the response that you chose.  At the bottom when you had completed all of the questions, you were then told if your beliefs lined up with a revolutionary, pacifist or loyalist.

I personally really liked this exhibit.  This was the last stagecoach marker in Guilford County.  The large X on it notes that it was 10 miles to Greensboro.  Why did I find this interesting?  The marker was in Sedalia, the place where Charlotte Hawkins Brown founded her school.

Still and behaving nicely.  Reading the information in the exhibit.  Looks can be deceiving.  LOL

This was a copy of the scavenger hunt that the kids did in the museum.  It was not related to African American history but general NC history.  They had to find each of the items in the museum.

The museum exhibit was arranged chronologically starting with early history and progressing to more recent history.  I love seeing the kids interested in learning!

I was surprised when I got to this exhibit.  Those that have known me really well for a long time might be able to guess why.  Anyone?  This is about a local company that purchases and sells china, silver and crystal.

Here is a closer look.  That is my china AND my crystal.  And I've been thinking of taking it to sell at this place.  It is pretty though, isn't it?

By this point, we had one person in our group that had just had enough of the day.  She was worn out and ready to go home.  So we did.

It was a fun day learning with our friends.  I do recommend both of these sites if you are in the area.

Happy learning!

Leslie

Art and Talent show

This "field trip" is one we have been doing for many years.  Since Five in a Row has art as a part of the lessons, we thought it would be fun to share some of the art that the children were doing as a part of their schooling.  It was designed to be low-key and fun.  To bring something that your children had made during the year so that it wasn't stressful for anyone.

Over the years, it has evolved.  We now have art from FIAR and other topics of learning.  We have also added in music - piano, guitar, vocal; poetry reading, dramatization and a stop-action video.  Its so much fun to see the students sharing their talents and I think that they really enjoy it too!

Here are some of the things we enjoyed.  

A lego display table was new for this year.

This is Daniel with his display.  For those of you that are "Rowers", you will probably recognize it!

Here is a closer look at the Little Red Lighthouse.  I love how he made the lighthouse keeper walking in mid-stride just like one of the pictures in the book.  This was a fun outlet for him while we rowed this book.  I'm hoping he can do this for more of our stories.

More wonderful artwork.

This was Eliana's snowflake.  I got the idea from pinterest - and actually did it!!!  It was a great project for her and I love how it turned out.  I placed masking tape down on canvas in the pattern of a snowflake and then she painted all over it.  Isn't it pretty?!

This was Rebecca's art piece.  It was well appreciated by everyone!  The edges of the canvas kind of blend with the table, but you can see the crisp edge lines where the crayon ended if you look closely.  I love how this turned out.  Lots of others did too.  She wondered if she could make and sell these.

This is a fingerprinting that Joshua did that was spurred on by our studies of George Washington Carver.

Isaiah shared a painting and also his Sarah Plain and Tall notebook.

Here is more art for you to enjoy.

After the music and talent portion of the event, the students were invited to stand near their art to answer questions and talk about it with others.  They really enjoyed doing this.

A project board was a great way to display items from one family.  Love this sweet brothers picture.

Proud of her lego creation!

I wish you could see the detail of this fruit and veggie stand made from clay!  Its amazing!!!  Click on it to see it up close.  So very cute!

These are our performers.

And this is everyone who put something into the show.

As always it is a sweet time to gather with friends.  I'm always blown away by the talent in our group and its neat to have the opportunity to see and hear and appreciate it!

Blessings

Leslie

Beyond Co-op - George Washington Carver #3

I'm working on getting my pictures from our vacation uploaded and sorted, but thought I'd play a little catch-up until then.  I uploaded so many pictures before we left thinking I would just post some things while we were gone.  Instead, I spend most of the vacation off-line.  It was fine and we all had such a great time!!!

This is our 3rd meeting of the George Washington Carver co-op.  In this session we talked about composting, soil and worms.  These books were some of the resources that were used.  

We started our time together with a devotional.  The children had the opportunity to examine a very small seed with a magnifying glass.

Also some discussion about GWC and the work that he did as it ties in to our lesson.

This looks like a really great book on his life if you are wanting to check one out!

This co-op was a very messy one.  We were forewarned though and nobody minded at all!  The kids tore up newspapers to get things ready for their worm bins.

Joshua and Isaiah worked on making a small wormery to examine how they behaved.  We chose not to do the large bins as we don't have a garden and didn't really know what we would do with all of these worms!  It was a good choice for our family, though I do confess that I felt a bit guilty for not going for the large bin.  It didn't bother my boys at all though, so I quickly got over it too.

They added soil and then leaves to a large coke bottle.  Then came the night crawlers.  Big ones.

They enjoyed holding them and were surprised when I agreed to hold one too.  LOL  Its fun to surprise your kids sometimes so that their expectations of you can be shifted and broadened a little.  

This is the view from the top of the bottle.  We brought this home to watch.  

After finishing their bottle, they helped some friends with their bins.  Tearing up newspaper into strips and then getting it wet and placing it in the large bin.  The bins already had holes drilled into the bottom of them for drainage purposes.

These were very large bins.  You can see two of them under this table.  It held a LOT of paper ... and worms.

Everyone worked happily getting things ready.

After the paper came soil.

Then the real fun ... WORMS!  Lots  and lots of tiny worms.

Can you just see the mass of them here?

These were the night crawlers that we then got out to compare.  His expression just cracked me up!

Fun snack taking a cue from the seeds talked about earlier ... lentil stew.  Yum!

The next part of the co-op was focused on a messy art project.  We learned that George Washington Carver loved to paint and was quite talented at painting.  He even considered making a career out of painting.  Thankfully he chose differently as he impacted so many people with his contributions in the field of science as well as helping many to improve their living conditions.

We made our own paints and colors.  The bases were all the same and each child was given choices to add in paint to form their own colors - as light or dark as they wanted it to be.  It was neat seeing them experiment with shades and colors.  

And then they fingerprinted.  Just like George Washington Carver.  And had fun doing it too!

Enjoying the texture and feel of the paint while creating.

It was such a hit with the older kids, that I decided to try this out with Eliana soon thereafter and she loved it!

As always, learning in our co-op is fun and informative.  I always look forward to these days!

Blessings

Leslie