History in the making
Feb 18th, 2007 by lapazfarm
Well…sort of!
Superboy has been busy in his Living History Corner lately. Here are a few of the things he has made:
After reading Little House In the Big Woods, Superboy wanted to make some Johnny cakes seasoned with pork cracklins. No problem. He followed a recipe in My Little House Cookbook for Buttermilk Cornbread and added some cracklins.
It turned out very yummy!
Superboy did not care for the taste of the cracklins, but Squirt and JBug were happy to eat it all gone!
Friday Superboy read about Native American and Colonial toys in his Colonial American Projects book, and chose to make a simple ring and pin game and corn husk dolls. I decided I’d join him on the corn husk doll making, as I hadn’t done it since I was a kid and it looked like fun. We used the instructions here.
Trimming the corn husks:
Braiding the arms and legs:
Finished products! He made the boy and I made the girl, of course!
On the right is the ring and pin game, which is actually much harder to play than it seems. Or maybe it is just me because I am just so talented that way…
His “Paddle to the Sea” boat is coming along nicely-nearly done. I will wait until it is done before posting pics.
Note: although Superboy is wearing the same shirt in all of the pictures, I assure you they were not all taken on the same day. It just happens to be his current favorite (why??) and so he wears it ALL THE TIME. Boys, ugh! Was that TMI?
Oh, that’s familiar about the boys and their comfort-clothes!
It is really interesting seeing your projects, thanks!
Oh yes, my boy always has one shirt that he wants to wear every day and I’m sure it shows in the pictures on my blog.
Love the corn husk dolls.
It’s not TMI, it’s funny! My son does the same thing with his shirts. I love Superboy’s Colonial projects. Are they in Kris’s book?
The ring and pin game and the corn husk dolls are in Kris’s book, along with a bunch of others. Superboy kind of picks and chooses from each section what he will do. I really like the book because it has so many cool, easy ideas to choose from.
Theresa, I’m SO glad that you are finding the colonial book to be useful! Much as I’d like to take credit for the corn husk dolls, I want to clarify that corn husk dolls are *mentioned* in the book, but I don’t include instructions for *making* them. Instructions for making cornhusks dolls are pretty commonly found online, and I wanted to focus my attention a bit more on projects that weren’t so readily available.
If you want to try another style of doll, made in a fashion similar to that of cornhusk dolls, but with strips of rag, click over to the Amazon page for my colonial book (there’s a link in Theresa’s sidebar) and scroll down to the post titled “Rag Doll”. It’s pretty clever, though I can’t find any documentation that says it’s a method that was used during the colonial era.
Kris
Right, thanks Kris for clarifying. We got the idea to do corn husk dolls from Kris’s book,then found the instructions online at the site I linked in the post.
His projects look great. The corn husk dolls are really neat and I bet my boys would like the ring/stick game.