Nicole Alderman

Alicia Bayer wrote:You also hear a lot about the toxicity of red elderberries.  The USDA warns not to eat *raw* red elderberries, but they were traditionally used as both food and medicine for some Native American tribes.  There are some folks online who have experimented with making things like red elderberry fruit leather but the main drawback of red elderberry is that it just doesn't taste good.  But yes, even more caution should be taken not to eat those raw.

I can vouch for red elderberries not tasting good. As a kid, I was told not to eat the red elderberries growing in our back woods. But, some of them were more purple than red (I have one such bush on my own property), and purple was my favorite color. So, I ate the berries. But, I didn't eat more than a few because they really didn't taste good!

Red elderflowers also don't seem to smell as good as blue elderflowers (I don't have black elder--just red and blue). It's been a while since I ate red elderflower, and I never ate the blue elderflower. I'll have to taste test them this year and see which is better. It'll be hard to compare, though, because they bloom at very different times of the year.

I was going down a research rabbit hole into art in the mid 1550's (in preparation for teaching about Rapunzel), and found this interesting quote (from Pigments in sixteenth-century European painting):

Another new discovery was the extensive use of colourless powdered glass. There are references to the addition of colourless powdered glass to paint in a number of documentary sources, including Richard Haydocke's 1593 translation of Lomazzo, which expands on what Lomazzo says by specifically mentioning that it was used as a drier. Several seventeenth-century documentary sources, many of them English, also suggest it should be added as a drier (see Spring 2004 for references). The presence of glass was first confirmed in paintings by Raphael, mainly mixed with red lake. In every example that has been analysed the glass contains manganese, which is known to be capable of acting as a siccative for oil; indeed it would be very suitable as a drier for the glazy transparent red paint. Further evidence that its purpose was to act a drier is the context in which it was used. It was found in the mordant gilding on the throne in Raphael's Ansidei Madonna (NG1171), where it cannot have been included for aesthetic reasons as it is hidden beneath gold leaf.

So ground up glass could be used as a drier. That won't help with making the oil paint thinner, but maybe it'd help with it drying faster, if that's something you need.

Burra Maluca wrote:I found this - DIY Kids Bow and Arrow Homemade from Nature

Or how about gathering local dye-plants and dying wool different colours to weave into your very own tartan?

Haggis making might be a step too far for kids. Or their parents...

Oooh, I do have hazel, and if I use smaller branches, we could make small ones that aren't too powerful. I like the idea of using two sticks and tip-to- tail-ing them, because that prevents us from having to carve the sticks.

Jill Dyer wrote: Do you have access to bamboo - not promising, but that might be flexible enough to make a bow.  Length of linen yarn for the string.  Watch everybody's eye though!

I do have bamboo--but I'm also terrified of this result! I'd want something small enough that it can't actually hurt anyone.

Suggest making cords by finger loop braiding and/or using a lucet tool(sub. a carving fork if you trust the students not to poke at each other) or even a short length of woven braid a la inkle  then there's always natural dyes if that hasn't been covered yet.

I'm thinking this might be too hard for some of the younger ones. Even making leis was really hard for many of the kids, and I don't always have parents there to help.

Soap stone - is it square-ended - if so it could make a nice stamp with initials or a small design carved into it.  plus handmade paper?

Sadly, the soapstone isn't square ended. It looks like this:



The paper making and book binding will definitely happen--it'll be with Belle since she loves books so much.

Jill Dyer wrote:Suggest making cords by finger loop braiding and/or using a lucet tool(sub. a carving fork if you trust the students not to poke at each other) or even a short length of woven braid a la inkle  then there's always natural dyes if that hasn't been covered yet.
Do you have access to bamboo - not promising, but that might be flexible enough to make a bow.  Length of linen yarn for the string.  Watch everybody's eye though!
Soap stone - is it square-ended - if so it could make a nice stamp with initials or a small design carved into it.  plus handmade paper?

Here's a general list of what I'm thinking of doing for each princess (or already did):

Year	Princess	Craft
400 Northern Wei	Mulan	Hand/Hanging scroll project
400 Northern Wei	Mulan	Finish Scroll
1000 Polynesia	Moana	Make clay canoes
1000 Polynesia	Moana	Make Leis
1000 Scottish Highlands	Merida	???
1000 Scottish Highlands	Merida	???
1410 France	Aurora	Make Spindles & spin wool
1410 France	Aurora	Dye wool pink and blue (and purple) with cochineal
1843 Norway	Anna & Elsa	Make paper heart basket
1843 Norway	Anna & Elsa	Play Charades? or make Froebel paper stars
1550 France or Poland	Rapunzel	Make paint!
1550 France or Poland	Rapunzel	???
1550 Germany	Snow White	Feather dusters
1550 Germany	Snow White	Herbal soap balls
1607 Virginia, USA	Pocahontas	Corn husk doll
1607 Virginia, USA	Pocahantas	Necklace with glass beads and shells
1660 Cicely	Ariel	Learn navigation by making a Mariner's Quadrant
1660 Cicely	Ariel	Make a Compass Rose
1660 Ottoman Empire	Jasmine	??? Weaving a small carpet?
1660 Ottoman Empire	Jasmine	Make a clay lamp? I was thinking of this, but it looks too hard now
1760 France	Belle	Make paper
1760 France	Belle	Bind a book
1880 Belgium	Cinderella	Write a fancy invitation
1880 Belgium	Cinderella	???
1926 New Orleans, USA	Tiana	Mardi Gras mask
1926 New Orleans, USA	Tiana	Make your own restaurant menu
1950's Columbia	Mirabelle	Dip candles

I'm currently watching this video:



I'm rather mad that I've never seen this channel before, because this is the sort of thing I need. Sadly, the first three crafts don't see like things that are feasible the amount of kids I have. But, maybe it'll be helpful for someone else looking for Scottish hand-on crafts for their kids.

The third craft--making a celtic knot--might be nifty, especially if we make it out of copper wire. The jewelry of this time and place are really cool!

You guys were all so supremely helpful for helping me find activities for my unit on the Northern Wei Dynasty, that I have come again to beg for your assistance.

Next week my 5 through 12 year old kids are studying Merida. I was so sure I would have thought of great craft ideas by now, because Medieval history is my passion....but I'm so falling short.

I thought about carving runes in soapstone sticks, but they didn't use runes from what I can see. We could just carve designs, as there's some cool stone carving in Scotland. But, my soapstone is super small (it's the welding soapstone sticks), so it might be rather...anti-climatic.

I would love to do something where the kids make small bows. I honestly don't care what they're made of as long as they work and we can make them in one or two 50-minute classes without expensive materials. But, my google searches are not turning up anything.

We could do embroidery, since a big part of the movie is Merida mending the tapestry she cut....but it seems kind of lackluster to do embroidery stuff when Merida hated all those lady-like skills. And what would we embroider in that time that would be cool? Pouched take at least 3 classes to make, and I've only got two classes for each princess.

The movie shows the Highland Games, but I'm not sure how to incorporate that into a class activity without....injury.

Any ideas? Any cool Scottish/celtic activities or crafts that Merida might have done that help teach about Scottish history? Maybe you know how to have kids make tiny bows?

My historically more-accurate Merida drawing

Nancy Reading wrote:What about something with autumn leaves? I'm thinking like leaf prints or rubbings....maybe even make salt dough impressions that could be coloured and hung for decorations.
These ones (not done with real leaves) are hung to make a thankful tree:


source

Skeletal leaves are also fun. May made a post on using a retting solution to make leaf skeletons https://permies.com/t/262971/Narrow-leaved-plantain-textiles#2622801 but some experimentation may be required.

As the leaves are falling right now, I'm trying to think of fun fairy-like crafts to use the leaves...but I'm finding this harder than I thought it would!

I saw ideas for making leaf crowns, so I tried my hand at that...but the leaves crumble really easily, and I foresee many children being very sad that their crowns crumbled.



There's cute ideas of making fairies and magical scenes with leaves...but I'm thinking we'll need copious amounts of glue. I'd like to avoid using glue, because I really want the kids to learn how to make things without it. But, I'm also thinking the kids would really have a lot of fun with it.



My husband suggested the kids turn the leaves into confetti and make a toilet paper tube cannon to launch "fairy dust" with....but I'm thinking parents might get really mad at me for that if the kids release it in the house!

Anyone have ideas for fall leaf crafts that won't lead to tears? (I'm thinking leaf rubbings and leaf prints might not engage the kids for very long, especially since many of them have been doing this in their nature journals at home, so might be bored to do it at school, too.)

I'm teaching a wildcrafting/botany/ethnobotany class this year. My husband suggested it would be a good idea to have a sort of "family tree" of plant types for kids place the plants we learn about in class, so they can grasp how all the plants relate and differ from one another. I think he's on to something! But, I wasn't finding a diagram that really did what I wanted.

I started making my own, and it's morphed into a sort of flow chart. I'd like to add a picture/example for each plant type. But, before I do that (and because it's bed time), I figured I'd post it and make sure I didn't spell anything wrong (photoshop's spellcheck is less than great) and see if I got all the fact right.

Any suggestions? Should I change any of the font sizes? I'm thinking maybe the "No!" and "Yes!" words could probably be larger.

My mom has a N2O whipped cream sprayer thing. She just puts in a new N2O cartridge when it stops whipping the cream. I wonder if one of those might work for oil?

She does have to keep buying new N2O cartridges, though.

I think she has something like this. If anyone wants to know more, I can ask which specific one she has.