American Girl Class Round Up

I had the wonderful opportunity to teach an American girl class for our homeschool cooperative. This class was fun because I had wonderful co-teachers who really have the skills I lack (anything arts and crafty) and we worked really well together. We had a great group of girls and the class was really memorable.

We took one doll each week and looked at her time period. I talked about the time period and location she lived in and offered some of the responsibilities and fun that girls their age would have had in that time period. We began the class with Felicity, then studied Kaya, Kirsten, Samantha and ended with Molly. The first four classes followed the same basic format. We had a talk time which I based heavily off the "Welcome to X world" series of American girl books where we covered history location and activities. Then majority of the class was spent in three activity stations which my co-teachers organized and executed for the most part. Which included crafts and games such as:

Felicity: Needlepoint, Game of Graces, Learning the Minuet, writing with a feather pen, using a wax seal and trying Sally Lunn bread

Kirsten: Sewing a patchwork pillow, painting a wooden spoon, making a yarn doll, reciting a poem in Swedish, eating Swedish cookies

Kaya: beading, weaving, making a corn husk doll, playing a traditional drum

Samantha: making silhouettes, bead boxes and rehearsing for our play.

The last few classes varied as for week five we put on a production of a Samantha play. The girls worked really hard and rehearsed and memorized their lines for several weeks. We had nine girls and only 6 parts so some of them split parts and they really did a great job. Somehow scenery and props came together and it all worked out very well. We were all impressed with how it turned out and the girls loved it. Many mentioned it as their favorite part of the class.

For the final class we had a fancy tea party with snacks from each of the girls we studied and the girls came dressed up and many brought their dolls. We talked briefly about Molly and we had a special guest speaker. One of the girls in our class has a grandmother who was 10 years old during WWII and had an older brother go overseas in the war. She came and spoke about her experiences and the girls enjoyed her and the tea party.

It was a great class and I would recommend it to teach to a group of young girls - it is easy to pull together and very memorable for the girls. It really made it special for the girls to do these things together and see what girls there age did over time. There was a bond of friendship created between many of these girls and a sense of accomplishment from doing the play together and hopefully they learned a bit of history while having all this fun. I think we had perfect ages for this class (7-10), if you know a group of girls in this age range consider offering it.

Peace,
Tenn