September Rabbit Trails - An Old Fashioned Childhood


Various types of books to indulge in this month:
Children through history
Childhood of American Heroes
American Girl series - I don't want to link to this because the website is this massive marketing rabbit hole!  Go to the library and check out the books there is my advice.



Read Alouds:
All of a Kind Family - this worked for us because we also celebrate Jewish holidays and these books recount the various fall ones that come in September and October

Little House books - we loved these and read all of them out loud at least 3 times over the course of the years.

Little Women -but especially the sequels where Joe and the Professor run a school for boys. Jo's Boys, etc.



The Moffats series

In both the Moffats and in Jo's boys the kids decide to make their own museum.  Let your kids work on collecting things to make their own museum.  Besides playing museum, let them play old fashioned one room school house or old fashioned general store.

Old fashion entertainment:
Read in front of the fire or by candle or lamp light
Play with a stick and hoop
Play with a ball and jacks
Play dominoes, chess or checkers
Play hopscotch with a board made of chalk
Jump rope with a real (not plastic) rope
Play parlor games like Charades, Twenty Questions or Blind Man's Bluff
Play marbles
Play card games
Play with wooden blocks
Play old-fashioned racing games like:
egg/spoon race
sack race
three legged race
play crack the whip
play telephone
Make mud pies
Play tea party
Bob for apples
Learn to square dance
Learn how to make a kite
Have sing-a-longs. Learn to sing rounds.

Old fashion chores and skills:
Wash clothes (or baby doll clothes) by hand and hang to dry
Make butter from cream
Make ice cream the homemade way
Learn to hand sew or at least hem and sew on a button
Learn to crochet, knit, cross stitch, etc  (we tried kits from Michaels)
Write on slates with chalk
Learn to sweep, dust inside and rake and shovel outside
Hand wash dishes and air dry (maybe when cleaning up from the tea party!)
Make candles
Bake - molasses cookies
Make a slingshot
Learn to whittle (can start with soap)
Learn to draw (our favorite resource was this one)
Learn to press flowers
Learn to dry herbs
Learn to make a bed
Learn to scrub a floor with a bucket of soapy water, mop or scrub brush
Learn how to start a fire without matches (obviously for older children!)


Educational Stuff:
Work on cursive or calligraphy
Learn to write with a quill pen or a fountain pen that uses ink cartridges
Use slates or chalkboards if you can.
Use old fashioned school books (at least while playing school!) to get a flavor for how they learned in the olden days.
Memorize Scripture verses and poetry
Play general store and have the kids price the things for sale and then do the math by hand

Field trips:
Any living history museum around you that touches on what life was like for kids at the time.



Art
Snap the Whip and The Schoolhouse by Winslow Home

Music
Shape note singing is an old fashioned way to sing that is very American and it's glorious!

Hansel and Gretel by Humperdinck

Make homemade instruments like drums, tambourines, kazoos, blowing across an open bottle, lining up glass jars with different amounts of water to make a sort of xylophone.

Religion:
Season of Creation runs from September 1 to October 4th - so get out and enjoy nature, participate in a clean up somewhere, read St. Francis of Assisi's beautiful Canticle of the Sun, etc

September is loaded with saints days!  This is just a small sampling.

9/1 - St. Fiacre
9/3 - Pope St. Gregory the Great
9/5 - St.Teresa of Calcutta
9/8 - Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
9/9 - St. Peter Claver
9/13 - St. John Chrysostom
9/17 - St. Hildegard of Bingen
9/20 - Martyrs of Korea
9/22 - Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War
9/23 - St. Padre Pio
9/27 - St. Vincent De Paul
9/29 - St. Michael the Archangel (Michaelmas)
9/30 - St. Jerome  (also Rosh Hashana). 












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