Homeschoolers Day at Black Creek Pioneer Village

I know it was a long time ago, but last September I went to Black Creek Pioneer Village for a special Homeschooling Program.

We got to do 3 different activities and we also got to explore the village.

The first activity I did was Dancing.
I won't post any pictures of the dance because there were other kids dancing with me. We learnt the Sir Roger De Coverly Dance which is a Contra Dance.

It was something like this video, but we weren't as good.

Here is a picture of me with the lady who taught us the dance.

We were upstairs in the Half Way House.
Here are some pictures from the house.

We made sure to order some fresh baked bread from the kitchen. It tasted really good!
The bread alone was worth the trip all the way out to Black Creek!
(If you do go to Black Creek, order the bread in the morning when you get there and you can pick it up in the afternoon.)



My second activity was "Apprentice to the Printer". :-)

In the Printing Office they had a couple old Newspapers that were published by William Lyon Mackenzie (Toronto's First Mayor).

Paper used to be made from cloth so people would sell their old cotton and linen rags to the printers.

Printers would make their own ink from lamp black or soot mixed with linseed oil or turpentine.


They had several different types of presses in the Printing Office:

A Tops or Acorn Press

A Washington Flat Bed Press from about 1840

(which we got to use)

A Gordon Press or Job Press

(This one is a bit on the dangerous side because your hand could get caught when the clam-shell closes)

A Proof Press

And a Cylindrical Press from the 1850s or 1860s

The Globe Newspaper used a Washington Flat Bed press before switching to a Cylindrical Press. I can just imagine the type of press they would use now!


At the Printing Office I heard about mnemonics to learn the order of the letters in the lower case.
The one I remember from the Homeschooling day is:

"Let me now help out your punctuation with commas".

When I googled that mnemonic I found other ones that you can use for the other rows:

"Be careful driving elephants into small Ford garages"

& "villains usually take three-em-spaces and run".

For more info on printing you can check out my blog post on Printing at Mackenzie House.

Here are some pictures of Notices that were up in the Printing Office.

The third activity that I did was a tour of the Grist Mill.

I don't remember as much about the tour but I did take a few videos:

Here you can see the water wheel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9ncfVaqGZM

And what it is like inside:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxolOj0AzBA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIOVcBp5TzA

Here is a model of Roblin's Mill.

And the flour that you would get from the Mill.

I hope I'll be able to go on a tour again and next time I promise I'll blog about it soon after so I will remember more.

Here are some other pictures from my day at Black Creek:

A huge "Thank you" to the people who organized the Homeschoolers Day at Black Creek. It was really fun and I hope that you have more programs like this again in the future!

Scarborough Historical Museum's Musical Instruments

Today we went to the Scarborough Historical Museum.

If you're ever in Scarborough, Ontario, it's a really nice place to visit. We were the only visitors there so we had a private tour where I could ask all the questions I wanted.

The highlight of our visit was going into the Cornell House. It's a house from the Victorian Era. (We're studying that now.) It was built in 1858 on Markham Road and they moved it to Thomson Park.

They had lots of musical instruments from the 1860s to the early 1900s displayed inside Cornell House. People would often entertain themselves with music.

They have a beautiful 1853 Chickering empire style, square grand piano with ivory keys. Instead of 88 keys like on a modern piano, it has 78 keys.
It has a great stool too!

There is also a D.W. Karn and Co. Organ

They also had stringed instruments.

Cello

Violin

Mandolin

Banjo

You probably wouldn't find this many instruments in one house in the Victorian Era. They were all donated to the Scarborough Museum and I'm really glad that they have them on display.

(Thanks Mom for taking these pictures!)