NMS Students Bring North/South Recipes Back To Life,

Create Hot Air Balloons Learning About Civil War

By Tanjua Damon

Georgia Batey’s eighth grade English classes culminated its study of the The Last Silk Dress, which is about a Southern girl during the Civil War who comes up with the idea of designing a hot air spy balloon made with silk dresses. The students were asked to create their own balloons as well as pieces of poetry that reflected being a soldier, war, love, death as well as make a recipe from the North and/or South that soldiers would have eaten during that time period.

“This book correlated with our recent trip to Washington, D.C., and Gettysburg,” Ms Batey said. “It is an interdisciplinary activity with social study of the Civil War.”

While on the trip in early April, Ms Batey found cookbooks that provide recipes of foods that the soldiers ate while they were at battle or at camp. She wanted to the students to see how even food has changed over the decades and while soldiers are in battle.

The students made items such as Hell Fire Stew, Robert E. Lee Cake, Split Pea Soup, Rice-Nested Eggs, Plantation Ginger Cake, A Lady’s Touch Corn Bread, Ginger Snaps, Yam Biscuits, Soda Biscuits, Federal Fudge, Calm Chowder, and Johnny Cakes.

The students attached their poems to hot air balloon replicas they created with various materials. Allison Conley used a sugar mixture to along with blue yarn to create her balloon.

“I related war to a ball of string,” Allison said. “It’s all so tight and you never really see what the true meaning of it is. If it were all unraveled we would be able to really see all the hate.

“I thought the project was fun,” she added. “I just had a really good time.”

Many of the students were excited about the project and what they learned from it.

“I thought it was pretty cool. We were able to work with our friends,” Stephen Kramer said. “It made us learn. It taught us what food they ate while they were on the battlefields and camp. But it was hard to write the poem about the Civil War.”

Ben Wicki felt the balloon and poem were the most creative part of the project.

“I tried to add humor into the poem,” he said. “I learned about the Civil War. It was interesting.”

The hands-on activity is something that helped many students understand the seriousness as well as the creativity that took place during the Civil War.

“I liked writing the poem. I wrote about hope after the war,” Jennifer Iassogna said. “Hands-on is so much better because we experiment as well as learn about it.”

Danny Cameros was impressed with what his classmates made for the project.

“I think this project was really educational. It gave children an opportunity to be creative,” Danny said. “Putting it all together to make something and put it on display was really neat.”

The students found it humbling to reflect on war, especially during current times, realizing war is the same no matter when it is occurring.

“The hot air balloon showed a lot of symbolism for the Civil War,” Kenneth Picerno said. “It shows how they lost it. It was a lot of hard work for the Confederates to sew silk dresses together.”