Our piece of history...

Last Friday we were able to participate in a field trip with several other homeschoolers. We were able to travel back in time to 1910, to a one room school house for a full day of school. This was complete with a packed lunch only like they would have been able to pack back then and dress as they would have. So here they are beginning their day, of course the girls are on one side and boys on the other.......unless you act up to much and have to sit on the opposite side! Thankfully we didn't have anyone have to do that ;)

They were given a list of spelling words to write on their slates....

then one group was called to the front for recitation while the other group stayed at their seat and practiced writing each spelling word, in turn, 10 times on the back of their slates.

Here was the girls cabinets holding their lunches.

The cabinet on the left here contained the boys lunches and the table on the right was the hand washing station, complete with lye soap!

The students took turns washing hands, girls first of course, after which time their hands were inspected by the schoolmarm.

There were a variety of options for what we could pack for lunch. Some lunches include "leftover fried chicken from last nights dinner", bread and butter, bread with meat,etc.... Many apples and surprisingly LOTS of hard boiled eggs were had. No oranges or bananas were allowed as tropical fruit would not have been common in Oklahoma during that time period. 

 And of course lunches were packed either in a pail or basket, with food wrapped in paper or cloth and a tin cup to drink out of.

 After lunch, which had to be eaten inside due to the rain we'd had that morning, they were given a small amount of time to play outside on this wonderful thing called a flying jenny! The kids had a blast.....I so wanted to join in ;)

 Following lunch they had a short moral story while they rested their heads on their desks. After that was the history lesson  current events discussion where we talked about recent issues here in Oklahoma including our recent statehood which  occurred in 1907. Many of the other facts we discussed I found very interesting and news to me! Last but not least, the spelling bee. Miss Snap made it up till the last cut, she and one other student missed the same word leaving the last student to win....so close!

 And of course this trip wouldn't be complete w/o a shot of them in front of the schoolhouse :) I'll have to take a close up of their mini quilts they (with some help to get them done in time) made to cover their lunch pails ;)

April highlights

My mom and I took a trip with the kids to Iowa mid-April to visit some family and had quite the adventure! Here was our first "rest stop" which was just a slightly rural gas station where there was some fun exploring area for the kids.

Of course I had some GREAT intentions of taking lots of pics and documenting everything......which didn't happen :) But I have to share our grand adventure. As we were exiting the hwy in a not so great part of town in the Kansas City area mom's engine just dropped the gear. No matter how she tried to change (even reverse) nothing was catching. So we found some guys at the QT a block away, which was why we were getting off in the first place, to get gas there, and asked them to help us push the car into the parking lot. They towed us with a chain into the parking lot where we started checking things and making phone calls. Long story short 3 1/2 hours later we were on the road in a rental van while mom's van was towed to a dealer to get a new transmission! Lovely start huh :)

Well after making it to Des Moines and staying the night with my cousin we headed to the capitol building the next day for a tour. The Zipper was full of excitement

as he spotted this....pretty huh!

Among the many things we learned there I think one of the coolest was the fact that the exterior dome is "painted" with real gold. It's a coating that if you scrapped it all together would be about the size of a baseball....wow, that's a small amount to spread over that whole dome! I believe they said it has to be redone about every 20 years. It takes about 2 years to do it because weather conditions have to be exact for them to do it in.

The 2 younger boys needed a nap so my mom and cousin took the older 2 to the military museum on the base where she works. Among other things the kids loved the para-scope.

And the jump area of a plane.

I'm just now realizing I didn't really take any pictures of family or other activities we did :( We also went to the Music Man Museum in Mason City and visited with my Aunt and other family there. It was a great trip and we look forward to doing it again sometime :)

3rd stop....

Our last stop for the buildings was the barn. Since the motto for the day was "Waste not, want not" we also talked about how they did this on the family farm. This first machine you would put the dried out corn husks in to get all the kernels off.

This machine was a sorter. It sorted the corn into small, med, and large bins. The small kernels were used to feed the animals as there teeth are usually smaller anyway. The med kernels were for making food for the family, and the large ones were for planting crops for the next season.

This was a mill for making corn meal. The one on the left is a crank and the one on the right is for milling by hand.

Though they don't use this it is a working cider machine. You put the apples in the top container and crank the wheel and a bucket placed in the wooden slats of the bottom catches the juices :)

This was a roping station where they had little fake cattle heads on the fence for the kids to practice throwing lassos at. Needless to say the boys LOVED this area!

And a slice of true work on a farm. They explained how one of the kids jobs, first thing in the morning,  was to clean the animal stalls out and put down fresh hay.

Last but NOT least, we made rope!

 Top: You attatch twine to the hooks. Bottom: you turn the crank to twist and tighten the twine creating a rope.

A bucket is at the other end acting as part of a pully.

Finished product :)

So as you can see we had a GREAT time!!!

1890's day cont...

After we finished up at the school house we headed over to the farm house.

This was the "counter" area in the kitchen.

The sink....

with shelves above it for spices and such as well as some cooking utensils.

The wood burning stove. They talked about how on Saturday nights mama would hang blankets up over the doorways and run the stove for heat so the family could take turns bathing for their weekly bath in the wash tub. And see the round silver thing hanging on the wall? That's an old fashioned toaster :) They set it on the stove and heat came through the holes toasting the bread.....pretty neat I think.

The other counter area and small shelf w/canned foods.....home canned of course!

The parents bedroom with laundry to be ironed on the bed.....along with the bed warmer.

Child's room.

A toy table, lots of little wooden trinkets. 

As Jerry my sewing machine guy would say, "Like Grandma's old black head singer." :)

The wood stove in the family room or parlor.

Cool old catalogues they had. You could buy everything from headstones to carriages to clothes and the list goes on!