American Girls' Club

American Girls’ Club: Kit and the Great Depression

This club was created for my seven-year-old daughter to give her an opportunity to interact with some of the neighbor girls during the summer. We have an 11-year old neighbor girl who is “too old” for the club, but wants to participate. The others are in the 7-10 age range though we have had younger siblings come and participate. We never had had any exposure to the American Girls, other than I had heard of them. No one in the club owns a doll.

Other than give the girls time to socialize in a purposeful setting, our main objective is to have fun as we learn a bit about life during the Great Depression. These activities are planned for a 2-hour period once a week. We initially tried to read the books together, but we ran out of time and attention. So now we just have a running commentary as we do each activity.

I included the Manners section because: 1) I found a book about it and 2) I felt that it would be a good addition to our studies and 3) it seemed appropriate for the time period we were studying.

References: The six “Kit Books” from American Girl (borrowed from the library), these include a section “Peek into the Past” from which we study the history part; Kit’s Friendship Fun (I did buy this one), which contains the crafts, games and cooking activities; and Oops! The Manners Guide for Girls (also borrowed from the library), from which we derived our weekly manners practice. Finally, I recently ordered a “Portrait of American Girlhood,” which is a curriculum guide based on the American Girl Series that I hope to use, but I don’t know what it’s like yet.

Here's what we do each week listed in order of History, Game, Craft, Cooking, Manners:


Week 1 The Great Depression, Fan Race, Paper Box, Waffles, The Basics


Week 2 School, Alphabet Traveling, Pencil Holder, Banana Fritters, Let’s Talk


Week 3 Christmas, Do This, Do That, Clutch Purse, Goldenrod Eggs, C’mon Over


Week 4 Growing Up, I Say Stoop, Jigsaw Puzzle, Vanilla Shakes, Ooh!


Week 5 Outdoors, Barnyard Confusion, Marble Maze, Iced Herb Tea, Yum!


Week 6 Changes for America, Tag and Sing, Scottie Pillow, Bread Pudding, Let’s Go


Week 7 Church, Button Race, Fruity Freezer Jam, Ambrosia, Yikes!& Big Occassions