American Girl class: Samantha Week 1

This week in our American Girl class we met a new American Girl (she's been around a while, but new to us!) Samantha! Samantha lives in 1904, so we are learning all about the Victorian era! Meet Samantha was our book for this week, and the girls liked it!

We also discussed "Tin-can phones" and worked on our Geography pages, which were New York for Samantha. You can find the pages here and here. On the New York page, I had them write this sentence: "Samantha lived in New York in 1904." I made it an easy sentence due to the variety in ages of the girls.

You can see my "tin can" phone on the table... made of plastic cups

Then we made "Fancy Fans" which is from Samantha's Friendship Fun, a book that I found at the library last year. Since my wood boxes didn't come in for the craft I wanted to do, I decided this would be a good one to make instead. It was kind of easy, and the girls liked the result.

Here is what we did:
1. Take one piece of Gift wrap, 4" X 30", fold it accordion style (fold, flip, fold). That step was hard for some of the girls. Once I showed them, they got the idea of what to do pretty quickly.

2. Staple one end of the folded paper so it all stays together.

3. Glue two crafts sticks to the folded paper, under the staple about 1/4 ". Don't put them too far down or the fan won't unfold correctly.

4. Put a rubber band on the opposite end of the two sticks to hold it while the glue is drying.

5. Place a ribbon that is at least 8" long on the sticks to keep fan closed.

 After we completed our craft, we had snack which was Blueberry Muffins--something Samantha eats in the books. You can find a recipe for them here. They were yummy!

Then the girls had time to work on their braided rugs. We began these last semester, and I have been saving them so we can work more on them. The girls were happy to braid and braid more! The new girls from this semester learned what to do and got the hang of it! We didn't have a chance to work on this during the Addy part of our class, since we had so many crafts to do!

 I had thought of making tissue paper snowflakes, another craft found in Samantha's craft book, but decided to do the braided rug. I'm glad we did-- the girls enjoyed the more relaxing class, and it gave them time to chat more!

This girl is an "old pro" in my class, and her braid was going across the room!

 The 2:00 class...

It was another fun class day! We're having Spring Break next week, and we'll talk more about Samantha again soon! I really enjoy these sweet girls and seeing their relationships with each other grow and grow!