The Black Plague

Ring around a rosy,

Pocket full of posies,

Ashes, ashes,

We all fall down!

Some people believe that this nursery rhyme began during the time of the Black Death. A red rash broke out on sick people.  A bouquet of flowers and herbs were carried to keep the sickness away, and possibly to keep the stench of rotting bodies at bay. One out of three people died from the bubonic plague during the middle ages. This plague, that was an infection carried by fleas that lived on rats, raged for 70 years and changed the way of life in Europe. In fact, many people thought that it was the end of the world.  Whole villages and towns were wiped out. The people that survived the plague moved to the city. Peasants became wealthier, while Noblemen became poorer. Becoming a craftsman was easier too because so many died during the plague.

Why I am telling you this?  Why should you care? Well, we made a craft today!!  After learning about the Black Death all week in history, we made a Black Plague Doctor Mask. People believed that if they wore these masks, it would keep the illness away. I laugh because I am not a crafty person, but I thought I could make this simple mask.  Oh how wrong I was. We use The Story of the World for our history curriculum and they always include great projects to do at the end of the lessons.  These vary from a craft, a game, or even baking and cooking.  I try to include an extra project occasionally but as you will see, my crafting skills are lacking. Just keepin' it real.

I cut the template out and assembled the mask with tape.  I did not see how glue would work. At first every 

kid wanted one for their own.  Then, they did not.

 

The Final Product. Pretty great, non?

What do you think?  Looks like a real mask or something. And in case you were wondering, we were still in our pajamas. This is one of the perks of homeschooling.

Supergirl

My three little pigs love to play together, and since I home school them all, they are always together and are each other’s best friends. We like to say “best sisters”. My little pigs are 2, 4, and 6 years old and they are into playing dress up, especially my four year old, Janiebug. Sometimes dress-up can be a little neurotic. “My hair is sticking up weird.” “This underwear is too tight.” “These fake boots keep falling down.” “This dress is itchy.” Or Janiebugs favorite thing to complain about with any type of clothing, “The tag is bothering me. Cut it off.”(Yes, we have a ton of clothes size 4-5 with the tags missing. I am hoping this will end soon, so I won’t have too much of a problem figuring out what size the clothes are to pass down to the baby.)

For trick-or-treat last year, Janiebug was Supergirl. A complete get up with a cape and boots, it was a very exciting outfit for her because she had a crush on Superman (Christopher Reeve in the 1980’s Superman movies). My husband decided to introduce the girls to his favorite childhood superhero and they have been hooked on Superman ever since. They run around humming the theme song, even my two year old! I should also mention that my oldest girl was Wonderwoman (my favorite superhero, hey we have to be fair here!!) and the baby was supposed to be a pumpkin, but she refused to wear her pumpkin and just ran around in black pants and an orange shirt.




Little Piggie running away.





Wonderwoman







Anyways, Jane was so excited to be Supergirl and when we got to our friends home to trick-or-treat with the other kids, everyone was waiting in the front yard for us, because we were late as usual. Supergirl jumped out of the truck yelling, “Hey everyone! I’m here!!” Then, she got a sour look on her face and proceeded to puke all over the driveway. She managed to avoid spraying vomit on her Supergirl costume and still went trick-or-treating in between bouts of puking and laying down in the red wagon we brought to pull the baby pumpkin. It was a short lived 8 hour flu bug, thank God. I was very proud of her perseverance to collect her candy that was due to her, despite the sickness.


Yesterday, Janiebug wanted to be Supergirl again. So we pulled out the costume, put everything on just right and told her to go play. One minute later, I heard Wonderwoman yelling in the back of the house. I went back to check and see what the crying was all about only to find Supergirl naked. She wanted to wear a flower sundress and be Super Flower Girl. Her superpower was the ability to spray super flower perfume out of her hands and stop the bad guys. Wonderwoman wanted to rescue her, but although she appeared to be an average girl wearing a sundress, she was really a superhero. I guess we don’t need costumes to be super after all.