Making Candles

The history book we are using with the kids right now is called Americans Kids in History: Colonial Days. In the book we follow a fictional family that would be typical of that time. The book is filled with not only facts about life back then, but also packed full of hands on activities for the kids (and adults) to do. This week we made candles.

Hand dipping 10 candles (two on each string) took about 4 hours. The kids did a far share of the dipping on their set of candles, with Mama and Daddy finishing them. 30-40 dips with about 60 seconds between dipping.

We ate dinner tonight by the light of the candles! And talked about what it would be like back then with no electricity and light from only candles or oil.

We used beeswax and colored it with a few broken crayons.

First six candles drying. The kids and us big ups sure had fun doing this. We also tried our hand at making candle holders, but they were a flop, thanks to not having clay, but  fake molding stuff.  We will try them again as soon as we get some air drying clay from in town.

Aaron and I really enjoyed making the candles and both would like to get a candle mold and make the candles we use. This was a fun project and we can not wait until next weeks history lesson!

A Piece of History

While Aaron was taking up the floor, he found a piece of history. 

An OPA BLUE POINT. 

After doing a google search to figure out what it was we discovered, we found out this.

The OPA Blue Point was a rations token/coin during WWII. OPA Stands for Office of Price Administration. They made red coins as well,  which were exchanged for meats and fat. The blues ones, like the one we found was used in exchange for processed foods.

The coin has the words OPA BLUE POINT, the #1 and two letters (HH). Depending on what two letters are on their coin, is how much it's worth. I found out that ours was worth $.80. According to the linked site above, they were only used in 1944 and 1945.  

While very small in size, it's fun to have a piece of history!