Samantha-American Girl History

For the past several weeks Riley and I have been learning about the early 1900s through the American Girl Samantha books. We are having so much fun with this. We have been reading about all of the progress in the "age of confidence," and how it was good for the wealthy people and bad for the poor (did you know kids as young as three years old worked 12 hour days in factories???). We are learning about Theodore Roosevelt, and about suffragists. About immigrants and Ellis Island. I love these books!

In addition to our reading, we've been doing some cooking and art from the early 1900s.

We made corn oysters.

And Apple Brown Betty.

We cut out Samantha paper dolls and acted out some scenes from the books with them.



In Happy Birthday Samantha we read about Samantha making her favorite ice cream, peppermint. So we crushed some peppermints and made ice cream in ziploc bags.

Hmmm...suddenly everyone is interested in American Girl History.

Silhouettes were a popular art during that time. We traced Riley's shadow and made one for her wall. I'm going to get one of those scrapbook frames to put it in.

We are learning so much through this and making some really fun memories, too!