We must never forget.

A small, but significant, historical inaccuracy

While finding information to use in creating a unit study and possibly lapbook about Hot Air Balloons, mommy has found a problem with the recording of some history. (Now, this is not really uncommon, because, especially when it comes to conflicts, the winners write the history.)

The first airmail flight is considered by most to have been made by an airplane in 1911. This, however, is not so.

The actual first airmail flight actually occurred on August 17, 1859 by balloon. This flight is documented by the Smithsonian Institute's Postal Museum.

According to the Mirriam-Webster dictionary, air mail is defined as a system of transporting mail by aircraft. As a balloon is considered an aircraft, this also validates the authenticity of this history event.

History is subjective. But, it would be nice if people did get indisputable facts right. Even the Baton Rouge, LA is wrong in that as of 2006, it had a historical marker proclaiming the first sanctioned airmail flight stopped at an airport near there.

C'est la vie.

End Women's Suffrage?

As a little experiment, and a commentary on education today - some kids made a short film as they asked students at Padua Academy High School in Wilmington, DE, to sign a petition to end women's suffrage. In other words, to deny women the right to vote! Padua is a four year Catholic High School for girls. Only one of the girls shown in the video declined to sign.

What a frightening state of education in this country.



It might be fun to perform this same experiment in our town, just to see what happens. Although, we would want to include adults as well.

If we do, we'll post our results!

Dinos, dinos, everywhere!

They've returned! Those giants of the past. Although this time, they're not so giant. They're not even alive!

We've been studying dinosaurs. First, we read the Magic Treehouse book "Dinosaurs Before Dark." Then, the girls were sent assignments from Professor Binns and Hagrid. They were to complete a combination notebook/lapbook for their work. They had match, writing and spelling worksheets. Then, there were mini books to complete about dinosaurs. Jewel helped Kitty by reading the instructions to her. Both girls did a fine job of decorating their notebooks. Here are some pictures of their work.

Maple Sugar Fun

Today, we traveled to a Maple Sugar Festival. While it was too cold for the sap to run, it wasn't too cold to see the tap lines.

We went on a tour of the farm, seeing how they use a system of tap lines. They also showed us the boiling center, where they condense the sap into maple syrup.

There was a wonderful exhibit of how pioneers and native american collected and "processed" the maple tree sap. The Chippewa or Ojibwa Indians didn't use maple syrup. Instead, they made a very fine maple crystals or sugar. This sugar was added to meat for preservation and taste, plus other foods as well. Salt was hardly ever used. Ojibwa families often went to a sugar camp during the running season. We also saw an exhibit of Ojibwa life at the time.

Kitty & Jewel had a scavanger hunt. They had to collect items from around the farm and turned them in for a bag of maple sugar cotton candy. Both girls also got to dip their own candles and dress up like pioneers.

We really enjoyed ourselves and look forward to returning again next year.