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Home : 2005 : March : 22

letters
By Susan

I did this last year and it went over very well - and made a great bulletin board. After reading some real (duplicates) letters from Civil War soldiers, the students created their own. They could pretend they were anyone
- a soldier, a nurse, etc... While they were working on their rough draft, we made tea paper for their final copy. They just dipped plain white computer paper in very strong tea - then left the paper flat to dry. The next day (or whenever they were ready for their final copy) they wrote on the tea paper. It made it antique looking. Some even used brown marker to make the edges look

old, and others used a few dots of red marker to look like blood on their letter. Some also tore the edges slightly. I put the letters on brown bulletin board paper, wrote "Civil War letters" at the top, and put a poster on each end of the bulletin board (showing Civil War figures).

Something else we did was make Hard Tack. We had talked about how this was their basic food during the war, so I made some at home and brought it to them. Some thought it was nasty, but others actually liked it (very dry bland crackers). You can also make Johnny cakes (corn bread) to show what the other side was eating.