Course/Grade Level: 5th grade
Lesson Title: Hardtack: The Survival Food
Teacher: Dawn Granath
1. Set Induction: Ask students to imagine a life without a refrigerator and stove. Talk about how hard life would be if you couldn’t store food and that you had to use it or throw it away. Give students a taste of hardtack. Recipe follows. Ask how they would like this to be the only food they might get for days at a time.
2. Aims/Objectivesand Standards:
IL.16
GOAL: Understand events, trends, individuals and movements shaping the history of Illinois, the United States and other nations.
IL.16.A
STANDARD: Apply the skills of historical analysis and interpretation.
3. Procedures, Assessments and Materials Required:
Students have a hard time relating to life before their time. The student will listen to the song.
Then receive a copy of the song as it is being sung. After the song, students will discuss the life of a soldier during war and why hardtack would be hated yet needed to survive. Review some vocabulary to help students understand the period use of the language.
Army Hardtack Recipe
Ingredients:
4 cups flour (preferably whole wheat)
4 teaspoons salt
Water (about 2 cups)
Pre-heat oven to 375° F
Makes about 10 pieces
Mix the flour and salt together in a bowl. Add just enough water (less than two cups) so that the mixture will stick together, producing a dough that won’t stick to hands, rolling pin or pan. Mix the dough by hand. Roll the dough out, shaping it roughly into a rectangle. Cut into the dough into squares about 3 x 3 inches and ½ inch thick.
After cutting the squares, press a pattern of four rows of four holes into each square, using a nail or other such object. Do not punch through the dough. The appearance you want is similar to that of a modern saltine cracker. Turn each square over and do the same thing to the other side.
Place the squares on an ungreased cookie sheet in the oven and bake for 30 minutes. Turn each piece over and bake for another 30 minutes. The crackers should be slightly brown on both sides.
The fresh crackers are easily broken but as they dry, they harden and assume the consistentency of fired brick.
Hard Tack Song
Let us close our game of poker, take our tin cups in our hand
As we all stand by the cook’s tent door
As dried mummies of hard crackers are handed to each man.
O, hard tack, come again no more!
CHORUS:
‘Tis the song, the sigh of the hungry:
“Hard tack, hard tack, come again no more.”
Many days you have lingered upon our stomachs sore.
O, hard tack, come again no more!
‘Tis a hungry, thirsty soldier who wears his life away
In torn clothes—his better days are o’er.
And he’s sighing now for whiskey in a voice as dry as hay,
“O, hard tack, come again no more!”
— CHORUS
‘Tis the wail that is heard in camp both night and day,
‘Tis the murmur that’s mingled with each snore.
‘Tis the sighing of the soul for spring chickens far away,
“O, hard tack, come again no more!”
— CHORUS
But to all these cries and murmurs, there comes a sudden hush
As frail forms are fainting by the door,
For they feed us now on horse feed that the cooks call mush!
O, hard tack, come again once more!
FINAL CHORUS:
‘Tis the dying wail of the starving:
“O, hard tack, hard tack, come again once more!”
You were old and very wormy, but we pass your failings o’er.
O, hard tack, come again once more!
Having to consume less appetizing food for extended periods led to revisions wishing for the return of hard tack
4. Resources and Scholarship:
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5. Conclusion/Lesson Wrap-up:
Students will break off into groups and use the “Twinkle Twinkle” tune to create a song about a food that they could not live without. When they are complete, they will present their song to the class.
6. Language Arts and Math Articulation (for 5th grade teachers only): Writing and using a song students know to use the rhythm to create their own song. Presenting their song in front of the class to help with speech preparation.