World War I Co-op Speech Day – Part II

We’re home from a lovely Thanksgiving in Pennsylvania with family.

So I need to finish telling you about our World War I homeschool day.  In my last post on our WWI speech day, I mentioned some of the speeches that were given. (The Sinking of the Lusitania, Donuts, Sgt. York, Army Nurses, Life in the Trenches, War Dogs and Cher-Ami the carrier pigeon.

After the aforementioned speeches, we heard about The Forgotten Warriors (war horses), and then Wesley came and told us about Air Warfare and specifically Frank Luke.

I found this to be an interesting point he brought out in his speech; although there are always conflicting numbers, the average number of days a pilot lived was 8 days with only 18 hours of active duty.  Frank Luke was the 2nd highest scoring American Army Air Service pilot in World War I.  Phoenix, Arizona also has an air force base named after him called Luke Air Force Base.

(Some of the speech makers and audience)

Audrey gave the last speech and it was her very first time to do it all on her own.  She did a fantastic job, speaking very clearly and with her speech almost completely memorized.

She spoke on “Food” and how Americans were able to grow 15% of their family’s food by planting Victory Garden’s.

Before we began our speeches, I handed out little booklets I had made to everyone.

I included some quotes of Bro. Branham & the famous WWI poem “In Flander’s Field”.

I also asked each of our speech makers to give me 5 things they wanted people to remember from their speech. I typed them up and included them in the booklet.

These booklets were given to our guests to keep and also to each of the kids. It will be a little memento of their day and hopefully, it will help the kids remember what others talked about. I’m sure that many of them get so “tied up” with their own speech they hardly remember any others.

Lydia finished up our day by singing the World War I song “When I Get Back to the U.S.A.” and then everyone joined her and sang “My Country Tis of Thee”.

You can hear the actual music on First World War.com.

When I get back home again to the U.S.A.

In the land of peace and freedom, I intend to stay,

Somehow I never feel at home when I’m away from there, anywhere,

No other nation in this creation would ever do for me.

I guess I’m cranky, ’cause I’m a Yankee, But then I’m proud to be.

On the pier you’ll hear me shouting Hip, Hip, Hooray,

When I get back to the U.S.A.

Next was lunch – all authentic World War I fare.

The menu consisted of:

Beef Stew – taken from Foods that Will Win the War and How to Cook Them – written in 1918

Hot Pot of Mutton and Barley (replaced the mutton with elk meat)

Oatmeal Muffins

Rice Corn Bread

Corn Meal Muffins – taken from Best War-Time Recipes by the Royal Baking Powder Co. – written in 1918

Whole Wheat Chocolate Cookies

Herbert Hoover WWI Cake

If you click on any of the links above it will take you to the recipe.

Audrey wanted to serve everyone since her speech topic was on food and the war.

Then Joane, one of the homeschool moms, had some activities she had planned for the kids and they all had a ball doing them.

Melody, picking her way through the grenades water balloons

I loved seeing all the kids playing together.

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I thought you might enjoy seeing some of the propaganda war posters that were made.

We had a wonderful time on our Speech Day. It took us a year-and-a-half before we finally got to it but I’m feeling motivated now and hope to get on track and do another day with a different topic, of course, in 2013.

The kids really enjoy it, it gives them practice writing speeches as well as delivering them and then there’s also all the creativity involved of choosing props, costumes or anything else we feel like adding in.

And we mom’s have quite a bit of fun, too. 🙂