Writing Like George Washington Did With a Feather Pen... Genius Idea Gone Wrong...

Not only is my title of this blog post entirely too long, my genius idea bombed.  We were learning about George Washington last week, and one of our standards in social studies is to learn about how things were "a long time ago."  In one of the stories I was reading, it mentioned how George Washington would write with a feather pen in ink, instead of a pencil like we do.  A brilliant idea formed in my mind:  we will write with paint and feathers on construction paper and really experience the difference of how we write today....nope.  It turned into a giant mess, with kids frustrated because their feather kept collapsing.  I suppose if I tested it before busting out all of the paint and feathers, I would have discovered that I could have taped the point of the feather to add stability.  

I hope I am not the only one that gets a wild idea, scrambles to make it happen so you don't lose the teachable moment, and then it is a disaster.  But hey, sometimes it works out and I can give myself a gold star for creativity for the day!  Her are some pictures of my almost successful project....

Here is me testing it out.  I thought they could write their names with the feathers and paint...

My dear friend, Tyson, came the closest to writing his name!

It was actually interesting to see the different kid's fine motor skills and levels of frustration when trying to maneuver the floppy feather.  Some of them wrote their name, and the others just had a blast painting with the feathers on their paper!

Did my vision work as planned?  Nope.  But did we write just like George Washington?  Yep!