Yankee Doodle Homecoming and Minuteman Camps

Last weekend we attended a local event called the Yankee Doodle Homecoming. (I'm sure you have heard of the Yankee Doodle song.) Well it's an annual event with a parade, Minuteman camps, craft stalls and food stands. It's a lot of fun for kids and adults and we usually find really neat stuff. I won't bore you with the hundreds of pictures I took, so I'll share a few highlights from the parade and Minuteman camps.

They were both excited about the fire trucks! Weeewooo weeewooo!

And the old-timey fire trucks.

We saw a couple superheroes in the parade, including Batman, Superman, and Iron Man. And yeah, that's an old batmobile car.

Munchkin loved the classic cars.

The Billerica Colonial Minute Men.

The kids were thrilled when they shot their rifles.

After the parade they had their faces painted. Of course Bean requested Captain America. Munchkin had actually wanted Iron Man, but the artist didn't know how to do an Iron Man mask, so he had to settle for Batman.

He liked it though. :)

Then we went down to the field and visited the Minuteman Camps. Bean first saw these when she was about 2 years old and absolutely loved them. I was so glad we were able to come again this year so she could see them. The kids love exploring the tents and talking to the colonial era people. We're still exploring the Colonial Era for our unit study, so this was a perfect time for them to visit and see the camps.

The camps were open, so anyone could check them out. You could ask them questions about the colonial era and they were happy to talk about their jobs and the lives of their family. The women were sewing and embroidering, some explained how to make candles and others talked about the clothes they wore and how they couldn't let anything stain them, because it was probably the only set of clothes they owned.

This man talked about how bullets were made using a small brazier.

This is the type of wooden bucket they used to make lye for soap. Though soap was used for clothes and not for bathing.

Taking a peek into one of the tents. And here is the woman talking about her clothes.

Examples of furniture.

A table for making straw brooms. This is grown locally specifically for the Colonial Minute Men.

They had an open fire pit and showed the kids how to chop wood.

Here's the doctor and all his fancy tools.

The tents are pretty awesome and Bean really wants one.

I spot something that doesn't belong here...

Some more examples of the cooking tools and furniture they used. This was a candle-making kit.

And it was lunch time, so some of the people were settling down to eat. 

And here are the goodies we came home with! Three beanie babies in sleeping bags and two Usborne products, Our World book and Big Machines to Spot cards. We also got two bowling ball pieces of art that are really neat and an origami flower, but I totally forgot to take a picture of them.

And to top it off, we ran into some cousins and the kids got to play, so that was fun. It was a really fun day full of learning.