History Day: Apollo Anniversary

Since we began homeschooling 18 years ago, we have celebrated random historical events as a way to make learning fun. The kids may have graduated three years ago, but so far nobody has tired of our biannual events, so we have chosen to continue with this tradition.

This year we chose the anniversary of the lunar landing, and an upcoming roaring 20's New Year's Eve party to ring in a return to the '20s.

For our Apollo party, we chose not only to celebrate the landing on the moon, but also the foods, yard games, and homemade nature of 1969. 

 

Our decorations were a fun mix of on-hand goodies, creating random vignettes throughout our living space. We used aluminum foil to create a lunar landscape for a stuffed bear purchased on a trip to the Kennedy Space Center years ago, and printed a few enlarged Peanuts cartoons from 1969. We hung silver paper lanterns as a nod to astronauts' spacesuits, and my son put together a wooden rocket model.

A vintage LP with sound clips from the newsreels in 1969 was a sweet find, and by rummaging my son's marble collection we used his photorealistic earth and moon marbles for an itty bitty centerpiece.



We had plenty of fun choosing era-appropriate recipes, and altering them to suit our allergies.

(Diced vegan hot dogs in gluten-free boxed mac 'n cheese was consumed.)

Our vintage fondue pot was pulled out, and we attempted to make a jello mold with vegan jello… that literally melted within two minutes of unmolding. Apparently organic vegan gelatin does NOT mold - nor were we impressed with the (barely lemon) flavor. Live and learn.

Being a humid July weekend, we had several movies to watch in the air conditioning, as well as a handful of silly outdoor activities to keep us busy. We used spray bottles to create crayon-resist canvases, and landed foam rockets onto floating "moon" frisbees in our itty bitty wading pool. To make it more challenging, we created "turbulence" by stomping about in the water as we aimed.

Squirt guns were used to steer an inflatable moon into a hula-hoop, which degraded into an expected free-for-all water fight. And finally, a fingerpainted moon posterboard was hung for a squirt gun race to see who could get their solo-cup "rocket" to the moon first while their arms were encumbered in "astronaut arm" dryer vents.

It was silly. The water fight was an expected outcome and a welcome break from a hot and lazy weekend.

And for us this was the perfect way to honor an amazing walk on the moon, 50 years ago.