We have been enjoying our Hands and Hearts Early American History Kit. I broke down each project into a clear bag with the paperwork that described what and how to do the project along with all the materials needed. That split the kit up into neat and tidy portions that I could use in the order I wanted to do them in.
The first project we started was the Trading Beads. These Authentic beads were very beautiful to look at. There was a little dust on the surface; from the clay cores, so we wiped them all down. Then we split them up depending upon their color. Then we put them in a vertical line from most valuable to least and calculated their total worth. The paperwork listed how much each color was worth. Then we figured out how many days we could pay an Indian guide and how much corn meal we could buy. We eventually used the trade beads to play restaurant and purchased our own things with each other.
The second project we did was the Bowling game. My daughter had difficulty painting the round, flat circles. We were to only paint one side; but somehow there was paint on both sides. I am suggesting we paint the underside white; but that hasn't been decided yet. We played a few rounds of this game and enjoyed it.
We made rubbings off of our Tea Brick. We had fun experimenting with all sorts of different materials trying to find the perfect medium for these rubbings. After all sorts of charcoals and pencils we found the old fashioned crayon worked best! How funny! We haven't made the tea yet b/c we want to make more rubbings.
We put our bamboo flute together. I do wish the leather straps were a little bit longer; maybe 2 inches longer would be good. I liked the flute, but wanted to do more with it. I wonder if we painted the flute if that would do any harm? I is nice to have a penny whistle (rural ) flute, but the project was almost too simple. Maybe a song could have been included?
That is as far as we have gotten so far. We are enjoying this kit!
