Send a REAL love letter this year...

Me, as Miss Emily....

For those of you who are in love with Books and Poetry, I will again be portraying Miss E. Dickinson this year at the Alabama Book Festival on April 19th, from 9am-4pm.

http://www.alabamabookcenter.org/events/book-festival.html

There will also be a gentleman portraying Edgar Allen Poe, and possibly other amazing personas! The authors are very friendly, and Miss Kathryn Tucker Windham is a one-of-a-kind storyteller from ages bygone. She is sure to delight those of all ages!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathryn_Tucker_Windham

Of Shoes & Ships & Sealing Wax...

Of cabbages, and kings!

Well, that's all fine for Carroll Lewis, but for our class, we learned about sealing wax! In fact, a few days ago, we re-created the French & Indian (F&I) War in our classroom by having those in bright yellow shirts line up, and be the British, and those in blue shirts, hide amoung the desks as F&I's. Most people think that the French were fighting the Indians, but that is incorrect!!! They were on the same side, fighting against the Brits. Guess who won! Did you say the F&I's? You are wrong! The Brit's score again, ladies and gentlemen!!!

Then we went on to learn about King George III who taxed (not texted) the colonists. He passed the stamp act - papers used for newspapers, and calendars were to be "stamped" with a certain design. I brought in a nice peice of linen resume paper to see the "watermark" stamp on it for the kids - SO COOL!!! A few other things I brought in to show them were my special ink pen, and sealing wax with my initial seal. I had 2 candles lit at the front of the room, and I went around the room to each desk, writing each child's name, in 1700's copperplate script on parchment. When it was finished, I folded it, and demonstrated how to seal a letter! Red was the most used color (black was to notify of a death), and so I chose the former. As the wax sloooooowly dripped onto the parchment, the kids had a great time imagining it was blood. :-) When I showed them my seal, they saw it was backwards! Some of them though it would come out backwards when I pressed it in the wax, but of course, it didn't! They all loved feeling the dried wax seal!

Well, after the colonists didn't pay attention to the stamp act, Good Ole King George III taxed items such as window panes, cloth, shoes and tea! Thanks to the Living History Group that I re-enact with, I had part of a tea brick to show the children. They guessed it was a box to hold something, or a hard thing that had a neat design. One girl did say a brick, and she was the closest!!! We compared that to a tea bag of today, and then we talked about the Boston Tea Party.

Mr. Paul Revere was our last story for the day. I read Mr. Longfellow's poem to them, and we discussed such terms as minutemen, man-of-war, sentinel, alders and belfry. On a map, we followed his path to Lexington & Concord. Since Mr. Longfellow was born in 1807, We figured that he was a young boy when Mr. Revere passed away. He may have even met him! But even if he did not, his story was well told by all.

http://www.paulreverehouse.org/ride/virtual.shtml

Pass along your history! (But check it, and search it, and make sure it's right!)