Saturday, June 06, 2015

Making Candles In The 19th Century

This week we headed to Museum Village to check out life in the 19th Century. You can see my post about guinea hens here.


We learned how candles were made and the kids even got to dip their own. They dipped two. One for them to keep and another to start the process for the next class who would get the demonstration. 


There were three pass throughs with the kids forming a circle and just walking and dunking. The candles are very tiny but the kids loved making them.


The kids learned that the first candles were made with animal fat and eventually paraffin which was passed around for them to feel. Goddess loved it so much we are purchasing our first candle making beginner kit


It was a great time and we learned so much!

To see more Sepia Shots visit Sepia Saturday

9 comments:

  1. It's good for the kids of today to realize you couldn't always buy things from a store or online - that you had to make your own. And some, like your Goddess, :) find that sort of thing intriguing enough to want to actually do it on their own - perhaps even becoming a favorite hobby. I've always wondered about beeswax candles? They were supposed to be the best but how many bee hives would you have to rob to get enough?

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  2. When you get the honey out of the hive, you get the wax honey comb too so if you kept enough bees, you would eventually get enough wax for candles. They certainly smell better than the parafin ones. Not to mention some that I buy in glass jars that seem to have some kerosene smelling stuff in them.

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  3. I always thought candle-making would be great fun, but when I eventually tried it out, I'm afraid I was rather unimpressed. Hope your kids find it interesting, though.

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  4. One holidays my mother turned over the laundry to making candles and we had so much fun. One of my favourite memories.

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  5. Great for children to learn how things are made and, of course, the participation is priceless!

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  6. What an excellent way to learn. You can watch instructional videos all day long but getting instruction from another human being is somehow different. I don't think good human teacher can ever be replaced.

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  7. I've always enjoyed those hands-on experiences at museums and restored villages.

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  8. Oh my, in the 70s I learned how to make candles, the kind in different shape molds, with different colors to add to the parafin...you sure brought back my memory of that DIY project. I still like to purchase hand made candles, no more making them for me.

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  9. Now that they've done that you need to take them to a the Julius Sturgis pretzel factory in Lititz, PA to learn how to twist pretzels by hand. You get to make them, bake them, and eat them.

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