In most of the US later tonight, the clocks will be adjusted from Daylight Saving Time to Standard time. The 5 Adventurers tend to feel impacted by this change on Monday morning rather than on Sunday. Typically for the ‘fall back’ change everyone wakes up early/easy so we have lots of extra time before we need to be at school. One year we even went out to a restaurant for breakfast!
We held school today and the kids worked on Assigned Writing, Math, and Social Studies this afternoon. Dad worked on some Daylight Saving Time facts which the kids were mostly uninterested in.
One particular nugget struck us as amusing and we thought that we would share it here with you;
Benjamin Franklin has been credited with the idea but he was actually making a dig at the French. He wrote a letter to the editor of the Journal de Paris and proposed that the time change could save money on candles between March 20th and September 20th.
The letter drips with satirical observations and is an interesting look into Franklin’s perspective. It’s well worth a 5 minute read.
One excerpt will give you a sense for the tone of the letter which he humbly signs, “A Sunscriber”.
An immense sum! that the city of Paris might save every year, by the economy of using sunshine instead of candles. If it should be said, that people are apt to be obstinately attached to old customs, and that it will be difficult to induce them to rise before noon, consequently my discovery can be of little use…
Benjamin Franklin, 1784
5 Adventures Together 