We have been making our way through US history and visiting each state in the order that it was added. We are getting there, with almost 30 states done! It has been great using My Father’s World for this journey. Each state comes with some interesting facts for it. The favorite for the girls is their obscure rules in each state.
We finally hit the California Gold Rush in our US history. An interesting time with many misconceptions. The common misconception is that the gold rush made many people rich when they went to California. Though there was gold, many were not lucky and did not strike it rich. It still was an important time in history that helped bring many to the newly explored western coast.
After learning about this period, we thought it would be fun to have our own gold rush. We went with a simple indoor version. We were out of sand, but since we had been baking we had lots of flour on hand that the girls had been playing with. Sometimes when the activity comes to me, I do not have time to prepare and we figure out what to use on hand. I also did not have, or was not able to find the pebbles so I painted round wooden beads with gold paint. I buried these in the flour, along with a variety of gold sequins.
Since I was using flour we kept it dry and just used a bowl and sifted through the flour. If you were using sand you could add water and a baking tin to mimic panning for gold in the river.
After the girls found their gold nuggets, they painted some popsicle sticks gold and created a frame with their gold nuggets. In their frame, they added their own image of them if they were in a gold rush.
