Revisiting Racism in Women's Suffrage. Plus: Pandemic projects

             

In recent months, historians and the media have focused on racism in the women’s suffrage movement. I wrote a book for young readers about suffrage back in 2012: Rightfully Ours: How Women Won the Vote. I asked myself, “Did I give due diligence in writing about Black women who were suffragists?”

            When authors write books one after the other, we lose track of older projects as newer ones crowd our brains. I truly needed to look back at Rightfully Ours and see exactly what I’d written about racism and Black women’s participation in the suffrage movement. I missed a few of them, namely Hallie Quinn Brown and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.

             I wrote about Ida B. Wells and Mary Church Terrell, as well as Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth.  I had researched the National Association of Colored Women, the NACW, which drew from Black women’s local church groups and clubs—the very same as middle class white women did after the Civil War. Black women and white women mostly did not join hands in working for the vote, but their efforts certainly paralleled each other.

              There is a strange irony in the racism that tainted the push for women’s suffrage in America. American women first found their public voices in church as abolitionists. There were Lucy Stone, and sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimke, and Lucretia Mott – all had verbal and sometimes physical abuse heaped on them as they spoke out against slavery in public meetings.

            The rest is history.

            On August 26 we will celebrate the 100^th anniversary of the ratification of the 19^th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. 

            In other words, it’s been one century since American women WON the vote.

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I’m sharing two kid-friendly activities I wrote for Rightfully Ours. One keeps Harriet Tubman’s bravery in mind as takes you outside at night. The other draws on a so-called “women’s activity”—baking.  

Both are perfect for these pandemic days of stay-at-home togetherness!

 

  

Solace in Nature

by Brandon Marie Miller

My usual blog posts discuss American history. Today, I feel more than ever the ache that we desperately need to learn our history, confront it, and do better. We face hard times. We are in the midst of a Pandemic. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs. We are also in a fight for justice and equality in our streets that has been going on for centuries. Why can't we listen? This has happened over and over again in our history. People are hurting.

This month I'm going to write about the tiniest thing we can do to find a moment of clarity. Get out in nature. That's all. Feel the sun, smell the rain. Engage all your senses. I know I'm lucky. I have a front porch, flower beds, herbs and vegetables I grow. I watch rabbits, squirrels, birds, lizards, and chipmunks in my yard. Sometimes a deer strolls through, or a raccoon, or opossum. A few minutes outdoors works wonders for our brains and bodies. It's how we humans are wired. This is important for all of us, but especially for children.

I'm sharing an activity from the book WILDLIFE RANGER, a colorful and fun outdoor guide for kids. Mary Kay Carson wrote the book and her husband Tom Uhlman took the photos. The book is a wonderful escape into nature with activities to help protect the wildlife in a child's own backyard, their own block, or the park they visit.

Enjoy and stay safe.

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Parents & Kids: For the Record...Track Your Quarantine

My note to parents during these strange days of Covid19.

Ask your kids to track their days living under quarantine. Why? 

The future.

(I know: working from home and teaching your kids is asking a lot.)

Ask your children–of all ages including teens and college kids, to make a record of these days. There are lots of ways to get it done:

o   Old-fashioned journaling.

o   Write letters to oneself to be opened in 25 years.

o   Make a podcast diary or a video diary…even younger kids can do this with some help.

o   Make a time capsule in a shoebox. Add small trinkets, tagged with their meaning. Or take pictures and either print them out or have them made at the drug store. Tag them with a caption. Or add the family’s favorite quarantine recipe.

o   (For that matter, make a quarantine cookbook!)

o   Write random thoughts on sticky notes or notecards and put them in an album or a shoe box. Be sure to put the date on each.

Whatever works for your child is best. Years from now, when young people ask your grown-up kid how it felt to be alive during the Great Quarantine of 2020, there will be that notebook, or time capsule or album or thumb drive.  All will be fine examples of

Primary sources

Primary sources, what nonfiction writers like me count on to add spark and color to our work, can be more than words. They can be things. My fav is the notepad my grandpa used in when he was a young World War I soldier. Another is wartime sheet music that’s 100 years old. And, of course, Grandpa, aka bugler Frederick Urban Logan, striking a pose with his friend Oscar Longhar.

 

 

Isaac Newton's Take on Social Distancing & Making a Plague Mask

Coronavirus. In this week of people socially distancing themselves by working from home, the Washington Post ran a story about Isaac Newton and what happened when he left his studies at Cambridge as the Plague swept across England beginning in 1664. Here’s the link: https://buff.ly/39JEcl2/

 Newton used his time in isolation at home in “Woolsthorpe” to put all his university learning to work.  As I wrote in Isaac Newton & Physics for Kids, His Life & Ideas with 21 Activities.

            Newton used his two years at home to let everything bubble up inside his head.  All he had learned at Cambridge about natural philosophy and mathematics now fermented like yeast in the bread and beer he had for breakfast. During the day, he could look into the garden and watch apple trees blossom into fruit that ripened and fell to the ground. When it rained, he could wonder why rainbows appear. At night, he still watched the heavens for stars and planets, just as he had when he was a boy.

(For more about the Plague in Newton's times, click here.)

Newton escaped the plague at Woolsthorpe, but in other towns and cities, doctors wore plague masks to escape the Black Death that plagued their patients. Here’s how to make one:

Astronaut or Aquanaut—Which would you be?

by guest-blogger Jennifer Swanson

It’s so much fun to imagine what our future careers will be one day. You might find yourself wishing to blast off into space OR to dive deep under the ocean. But would you like either of these careers? Are they hard to do? What kind of training is needed? And WHAT does the suit you have to wear look and feel like?

   These are all amazing questions. A lot of them are answered in my book, Astronaut-Aquanaut: How Space Science and Sea Science Interact. But because this is a science/STEM/STEAM book we have some fun activities for you to do right in your own home to see which one of these careers you might choose.

Astronaut Training:

Do you have what it takes to dock at the Space Station? Grab a tennis ball, a big plastic cup, some rope or strong string and give it a try. It’s not as easy as you think!

Aquanaut Training:

Underwater is all about how things float. If you were going to dive deep under water, how do you make sure that you stay down there? And how do you make sure that you come back up? That force is called Buoyancy. It’s a force that pushes up on us as gravity pushes down. Try this experiment to see how things float… or sink

Did you succeed? Did both of your experiments work? Which one did you like more?

Challenge: If you’re looking for more ways to decide, I challenge you to design your own space suit OR underwater suit. What would it look like? What tools would it have? Draw it and compare with your friend.

So what did you decide? Will you be an Astronaut OR Aquanaut?

My choice? Aquanaut. All the way. I’d rather see this out my window: 

Than this:

Although to be quite honest, they are both amazing views! Thanks so much for joining me on the Hands-On Books!  Jennifer Swanson, www.JenniferSwansonBooks.com

Cook Chinese Dumplings by (Chinese) Lantern Light!

We welcome author Sherry Ellis this month!

I’m happy to announce the release of my newest book, Bubba and Squirt’s Big Dig to China. It's fiction based on my research about China. 

When Bubba and Squirt accidentally arrive in China, they discover they are in a pit with the Terracotta Warriors. These statues were first discovered in 1974 by local farmers digging for a well. The warriors were buried with the first Emperor of China, Ch’in Shi Huang-ti. Their purpose was to help him rule another empire in the afterlife. It is believed that there are more than 8,000 soldiers. No two are the same.

Cut A Silhouette, An Old-fashioned Art Form

by Brandon Marie Miller

The art of creating a silhouette has been around a long time, but was most popular in the 1700s and early 1800s. A silhouette, cut from dark paper, shows a person as a solid shape, one color, usually in profile.