The Steampunk Invasion of St. Augustine

Saturday, November 11, we joined the Cowford Steampunk Society and the Tampa Bay Steampunk Society for an outing to see the "Dressing Downton" exhibit at the Lightner Museum.







There was a very talented silhouette artist, just inside the front door of the Lightner museum.
This is my silhouette:



One of the other ladies from our group had her's done, as well:































Group pictures by the City Gate:









Because of Veterans Day, there was free admission to the Castillo de San Marcos, the old Spanish fort, so we went there after the group pictures.

















The Columbia Restaurant for dinner:

Homeschool International Fair

This was the lowest turnout I have ever seen for the homeschool International Fair, but the kids who did show up did a great job. Blaze chose to do a display about Ancient Egypt.

We had actually believed that the event had been canceled due to lack of interest, so, although Blaze had started working on a couple things, such as painting a sarcophagus kit, we had stopped working on preparing a display. Then Monday evening, I saw an event announcement that said that the International Fair would be held on Friday at 2:00 in the afternoon. This project then took over the rest of our week. I did research while Blaze wrote, colored, cut, glued, and even cooked until the entire thing was done to our satisfaction at 12:30 p.m. Friday.



Most of the children did presentations on stage to go with their displays.

















Blaze wasn't comfortable with getting up on stage, but he did fine explaining things to people who came up to his display, so we made the display as interactive as possible, with flaps to open to read the answers to questions, an Egyptian dessert to taste, and hieroglyphic stencils to use.







On a side note: If you want to know how much Blaze has grown recently, that is my T-shirt from the 2006-2007 King Tut exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago that he's wearing.

The Tallahassee Homeschool International Fair

Blaze finished his project about the Vietnam War yesterday.



Today, he presented it at the International Fair at the Leon County Public Library.





The board included photographs that my uncle had sent home during the war and some that DH's father had taken.

The t.v. on the right, was made from a cereal box. It held Blaze's Kindle, which was playing actual news coverage of the war. The paper to the left of the t.v. (which is hard to read, since the pencil writing doesn't show up well in photographs) says that 90% of all American households had television by 1960. The paper just below the t.v. talks about how television news affected popular opinion by bringing the horrors of war into our living rooms.

The rest of the children at the International Fair did a wide range subjects and presented them in a variety of ways. Some had boards like Blaze, some gave Power Point presentations, some even had food to share with the group.





























I'm very happy with how Blaze's display looked and am proud of him for all the writing he has done for it (writing is not easy for Blaze).