Parents, especially those of you with boys (or anyone at all, actually!), can you help me? Our third son is 8, and my husband is not the boyscout leader type, and thinks that the boyscouts are some sort of ultra-conservative organization anyway. (He's born and raised in Manhattan--very bookish, which suits me fine, but presents some challenges as we were blessed with three boys). So, in my desperation to find an activity that will afford our young one the opportunity to be part of a group, build community, and allow me to make some new friends as well, I signed us up for 4-H, which offers a huge variety of projects, and is for both boys and girls. And I signed up to be a project leader for the fall. My son's interested in blacksmithing and many colonial craft activities; but I'm not sure too many other boys are, so I need some help thinking of things that might sound interesting to both boys and girls. So far, I've got hearth cooking, candle making, gravestone rubbings (I won't even go into the elaborate preparations I've made for this to work at my home kitchen table), making a horn book using wood cut out by my next door neighbor, parchments I got at Sturbridge, and quills and ink I got there too; also perhaps soap carving, making pincushions of old spools, a bit of cloth, batting and yarn (the boys could stick two pins in the top for antennae, draw a face on the spool, and call it an alien??), pomander making around Christmas time, and, and, and....well, I think that's it so far. And I don't know the first thing about soap carving; what kind of soap do you use?? If I had a daughter, and only girls signed up, we'd make clothespin dolls and a whole lot of other stuff. But I have a boy, and since the whole point of this is for him to widen his circle of friends (ideally, boys, since he already has enough girl friends), I want to attract some boys to this project! So there it is. Has anyone here--how about you homeschoolers?--done 4-H, or done a lot of projects at home that might be considered "Colonial"? I really don't care if it's the 1600's or the 1800's. Just "back in olden times" -ish.
Help! Please!