Depression simulation for kids: Living as Hobos

The 1930s is a fun era to study with your kids.  It’s something many of our grandparents lived through and tell stories of. Many things were set up societally for us during this period.  Side effects from laws enacted during that period are still being felt now, so I want my kids to understand this time, or at least get an idea of what happened then.  So, I set up a Depression Era Simulation for kids, and they went through it and had a blast. It made for a great history lesson and works great in our US history lessons as part of our Between Two Wars Unit (which apparently never turned into a landing page).

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Our Great Depression Lesson

At the time, we were using All American History volume 2.

But, here are a couple of picture books to read:

• Born and bred in the Great Depression
• Potato: a tale from the Great Depression
• The Lucky Star
• Saving Strawberry Farm
• Home in the Woods

First, we read about what happened then, how so many people couldn’t afford to pay for their houses, they had borrowed too much money during the ‘20s when everything looked great, and now they were kicked out of their houses.  So, they made houses out of whatever they could find: fabric scraps, newspapers, random wood scraps.  It wasn’t known what they’d use.

Our Hooverville mini-notebook

Supplies for this mini notebook page: cardstock page, craft sticks, scissors, glue, stuff to write

After talking about the houses for what seemed like forever to me, the kids were fascinated by it.  We made our own report on what it would be like living in our very own Hoover house.  Doesn’t mine look great?  I forgot to say originally, I based it vaguely off the President’s Day craft idea I found.

I still need to work on the kids’ understanding right to right-to-left progression in their writing, but they are getting better at expressing themselves.

This was the part that really cracked me up.  The size of their forks to their bodies is hilarious.  I think the fork is almost the same size as them.

Great Depression Simulation: Living as Hobos

A few days later, we had our history co-op. And we decided to have the kids simulate living like hobos and scrounge up a meal to eat together.

Supplies for hobo simulation: vegetables, sausage or hamburger meat, butter, empty can, place to build a fire or a grill, spices, and space to hide them in

During that period, people would scrounge and find whatever they could eat, and then they would cook it in a common pot.  You might contribute a potato, carrots.  Maybe you got a job for that and were able to add in some meat.

To simulate this, we had the older kids hide all of the food needed to make our stew outside in the backyard.  Carrots, potatoes, onions, sausage (in its container), spices.  The kids happily ran all over trying to scrounge up what was needed for our food.

At the end of the day, everyone contributed what they’d brought back to the common pot.  Of course some of the less-upstanding members would have stolen their contribution, but we were concentrating on the people who got it honestly.

I wrote more about how to make hobo stew (or trash can soup) earlier, so I won’t repeat all of the details here.

Then they’d all gather around the fire pit and light up a fire.  Our attempt at a fire was rather unimpressive.  Too many “helpers” trying to feed it, and poking and prodding it.

So we cooked it on the grill.  It did make for a more even cooking experience, if much less authentic.

As we were taking this rendition out, we got an object lesson in the difference between our cans and the cans in the 30s.  You see that coating that is partially burned off?  That is BPA, you know, the stuff we freak out about being in our water bottles.  Well, it also lines most of the cans we store our food in.

It’s slightly disturbing to see that all burned off and to think of it in the food we had just cooked.  I can’t quite decide on my general thoughts on the whole BPA thing, but I know if you’re doing a project like this, take the time to find some cans that don’t have BPA.  We don’t use a lot of canned goods, mainly soups and tomatoes, but when we do, it tends to be several cans for that meal.

So, I have some thinking to do on the whole matter……….

At some point in the near future, I’ll share the movies we watched to get the flavor of the era.   We had to mostly skip the 20s for movies because almost every movie we own is just not appropriate for my kids’ age.  I also know of a few good books to read, which next time around my kids will almost be too old for.

Though I do eagerly look forward to showing them Oscar.  They’re just a hair young for some of the humor in that movie.

Learning More History

• Japanese Internment World War 2 booklist
• WW 1 Helmet
• Holocaust picture books
• Runaway Scrape Lesson, Texas History
• Vietnam Wall Field Trip