There is a national holiday this week, sort of - Columbus Day. Of course I say “sort-of” because neither school nor work is off and most people probably don’t even know when it is. Unless you really needed something in the mail on Monday or you are a good shopper, who knows it as a nice sale day that unlike Black Friday doesn’t draw millions of people into the stores, you probably didn’t realize that Columbus Day has come and gone. Since Abby doesn’t share Briana and I’s ‘shop ‘til you drop’ mentality, we skipped the malls and decided to learn all about Christopher Columbus.
The most important things that I wanted the kids to know are:
1) There was a real man named Christopher Columbus who discovered America
2) Columbus sailed the ocean blue in Fourteen Hundred Ninety Two
3) He had 3 ships named the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria
So during breakfast we talk a little about history. I explain the basic story with a little editorializing to keep it interesting and relevant to the kids. “This year is called two thousand and ten and each year we count up one year, so next year when we have New Year’s Day and we shake the noisemakers it will be two thousand and eleven. I want to tell you about something that happened a long time ago in 1492. A man named Christopher Columbus wanted to find a new place to go (I skipped the whole part about new trade routes, and later will skip the part about indigenous people and alternative theories on who really discovered America.). So he asked King Henry of Portugal to buy him a boat.” “For his birthday or Christmas” asks Briana. “Just for fun” I tell her. “But King Henry says No Way! So Columbus didn’t get his boat.” “Poor Columbus!” laments Bree. Abby is mostly focused on getting her yogurt into her mouth with her spoon, by herself (a new trick for her), but I know it’s soaking in.
“Wait, the story is not over yet. So then Columbus asked Queen Isabella of Spain and she said Yes and gave him 3 boats.” “That’s why he had to ask nicely. Then he got even more boats.” Adds Briana. “Um, sure. He asked Queen Isabella more nicely so that’s why he got 3 boats. He sailed all the way to our house in America and he was the first one to find America. He got here on October 12th which was yesterday. But he got here lots and lots of October 12ths ago in 1492. So now we sing ‘In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue’ and we get special deals when we shop this week to celebrate.” I couldn’t help myself with the last little bit.
So we sang ‘In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue so we can shop ‘til we drop.” Whoops. I’ll sing the song again later today and drop the shopping bit. J
Then I pull out pictures of Columbus with his ship in the background for us to color. I just Google imaged ‘Columbus Day coloring pages’, and printed one I liked in triplicate so we’d all have one to color. I specifically picked one out that had Columbus looking like a real man. There were lots of images of him as a cartoon, and even some wherein I think he looked like a cartoon, bumbling villain of some sort! I wanted to make sure the kids realized that this wasn’t like when I told the story of Hansel and Gretel, but that this was a real man in our history.
While we colored I told the story of Columbus again. Briana wanted to talk a lot about the boats and sailing. Perfect segue into what I wanted to do next. Thanks, Bree! I told the kids that you can’t be a good explorer without a sailor hat and Mommy knows just how to make perfect ones. Good old origami.
To make the little sailor hats we made, take a sheet of paper (regular 8.5x11 works and is what we used. Bigger paper would have probably worked better, but we didn’t have any) and fold it in half. Then take the two corners with the folds in them and fold them down into the center. Take the flat, open part at the bottom and fold it up, over the bottom of the two folds you just made. Flip it over and do the same size fold on the other side bottom part. Open up your hat and put it on. Trust me, it sounds a lot more complicated than it is. Try it. Since our hats were a bit small for our heads, I took some wrapping ribbon and taped it to the bottom to make a loop to hold the hats on our heads. Bree had to decorate hers so we colored for a bit longer to make pretty sailor hats.
While Briana finished decorating her hat, Abigail and I went through the playroom to get the Arby’s explorers happy meal toys from at least 6 months ago. Thanks to my occasionally lazy dinner fast food runs, we had 2 periscopes, 2 binoculars, and 1 telescope to take with us to explore the new world/ backyard. I was prepared with toilet paper rolls (if you have kids, never throw those away! There’s always something you can do with them.) to make binoculars if we’d long ago lost the Arby’s ones, but there they were in the “random toys” bin. And everyone says that eating badly doesn’t pay off!
We sang the 1492 song (without the shopping bit), screamed, “land ho”, and discovered the new worlds in the backyard for most of the afternoon. Briana was the Santa Maria, I was the Pinta, and Abby was the Nina. While we were calling each other by our ship names, I told the kids that Columbus himself was on the Santa Maria. Bree was quite happy for her pick. Then Briana wanted to go on a look and see adventure to explore more new worlds. Perfect since Abby was ready for a snack. We drove around for a while and snacked and sang and returned to the yard eventually to play explorers, hats and all, until lunchtime.
For lunch I wanted to have some fun, but cooking is not really my strong suit. I made peanut butter and jelly on round, thin, whole wheat bread. I tried to make big peaks of jelly for waves. The kids have enough imagination to see water for that. Then I baked a sweet potato and quartered it so that there would be a boat on each of the kids’ sandwich halves. I sliced carrot sticks for flag poles and cut a notch in the top of the carrots wherein I placed a triangle of provolone cheese for the flag. The kids loved the cute boat lunches and gobbled them up.
Hopefully smooth sailing into naptime now!
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