Doll Parenting with Amy Helton (Dandridge House Dolls): Her Doll Story & Behind The Collection

really started with my blog, which is dandridgehouse dolls.com. And before that, it was teaching history.

I homeschooled my my sons and we read all of the American Girl books as we would like reach that point in history.

So if we were studying the Depression, we would read the books just kind of as like a supplement sort of thing.

And I don't know if a lot of people are aware, but back in the 90s, Pleasant Company had teacher like companion books so that you could teach using the American Girls series.

And so I have all of those.

And then it was just for the first original six.

And so then when we would branch out and do like Kaya and Kit and Julie, I think Julie is where we stopped because my kids were getting bigger.

But I kind of created like a little curriculum using those patterns that they had used in the teacher's books to continue learning about history using the American Girl books.

And so then once my boys kind of like outgrew that, Then I started teaching co-op classes for kids in our community and using kind of what I had done.

I would set up my collection so they could see the details of it.

Also in the 90s, do you remember they had those like craft books and cookbooks?

Yes, I have a couple of those.

Yes.

So I have those.

So we would make a recipe from the cookbook of the era.

We would make a craft from that, you know, character story.

And then I was always dressed in like full on historical clothes.

So I kind of like cosplay.

And so I have a lot of historical costumes.

And so I would kind of have these little afternoons where we would, you know, I would do this co-op class, teach, be in costume.

We would do all these things.

And so when that ended, I just kind of was like, you know, I would love to be able to create a resource for other parents who would like to do something similar.

That's kind of how the blog came about.

I would travel and go places and I would take a doll and I would try to kind of view the museum or the historic sites kind of through the doll's story and try to connect that.

And then I would share the recipes that I had made from the cookbooks.