Pioneer Days

Whew...These past two days were a whirlwind of excitement and now exhaustion!  And this is a warning....this post is full of pictures!

As mentioned in previous posts that we've been reading about pioneer life while reading aloud Little House in the Big Woods.  We're soon going to be taking a break from the book and looking at the Nutcracker.  So what better time to celebrate what we know about pioneer life and spend some time actually doing things like pioneers might have?

We experienced many things:

• making bread and butter
• learning how to weave and make a basket
• saw a duck and a chicken, talked about raising farm animals
• learned games like hopscotch, Cat's Cradle, and leapfrog
• made rag dolls

I hope that these activities truly impacted your child and made a lasting impression, driving home the similarities and differences of the times back then. I hope too that these past 2 days your child learned a new skill or found they enjoy something new.

We also had our first FAMILY LUNCH TIME on Tuesday. It was great to have more of our classroom family with us for lunch.  I will let you know if and when we will have another one.  If you have any suggestions or comments please let me know.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving break...hopefully you get to spend some special time with your family.

Learning to play Leapfrog!

Making a RagDoll

Working on their RagDolls

The Cramer family in a duck and chicken...we got to crack open the eggs to compare them!

Chip the duck got to visit our classroom

Checking out the different eggs

Mrs. Cramer and Nibbles the duck (he's the nice one)

We learned some square dancing moves

 

Miss Alison helping with the yarn for our baskets

Just getting started on her woven basket.

The basket weaving was HARD work!

We finished 2 of the 3 parts to the Little House in the Big Woods mini-series

Our Pioneer Journals

Dried Foods

In a follow up to our Little House in the Big Woods post here, this one shows you our journey into dehydrating food.   Let me first start off by saying how this was my first time with a dehydrator and I truly only knew what I was doing thanks to directions that I printed off the internet!

In one section of their story, Ma and Pa mentioned drying foods (fruits and veggies and meats) which started a whole discussion on why and how.   This lead to our adventure into dehydrating foods.

Last month, the students brought in foods they would be interested in drying.  The foods included lemons, limes, apples, bananas, and tomatoes.  This was going to be an interesting experience.   

We started at 8:40am, hoping that most of the foods would be done before we left at 3:10pm.  We got to see the whole process, discuss how the dehydrator works with heat and air and then were able to taste the fruits of our labor. We also discussed how the pioneers didn't have a dehydrator but decided that they used air and heat too, just differently. 


Here are pictures that our Class Reporter took to document our process.  Unfortunately we don't have pics of them trying the foods although they did enjoy most of the items!  Dried lemons seemed to be the least favored ones of them all with tomatoes coming in second.   Check out the last picture, too, that shows all the dried foods we've tried as we did this exploration

Little House and SOO MUCH MORE

Do you know the TV series Little House on the Prairie?  What about the book series it was based on?   Well I've made a few posts (here and here) and have mentioned in our last few newsletters about how we are reading The Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. This story takes place before Pa, Ma, Mary, Laura, and Carrie move out to the prairie. It tells the tale of them moving out to their little house, the trials they take on, and they ways of living in the pioneer days.

Mrs. Englebrecht reads little bits of the book to the classroom each day, taking time to stop and explore what's really happening in the book.  This time to really dig into the book and understand has brought about lots of learning opportunities.  They've researched black bears. They have learned about covered wagons, and how people lived and traveled back then.  They've studied Wisconsin (where the family is living) and taken that opportunity to learn about how weather is different in different locations.  They know too how the weather in Wisconsin affects life for the family and animals.   They've explored dried foods, rag dolls and why that's all they had, traps, phrases like "Saved my bacon", and so so sooo much more.

I know the kids have enjoyed the book and we're not even close to finishing it! It has been quite the learning opportunity and the kids don't even realize that we're sneaking some valuable learning time into their read aloud.  We've had several opportunities to take this learning a little bit further and give them the chance to see it in action.

After learning about how the family dried their foods and some plants they got to taste beef jerky (which got mixed reviews).  I borrowed a food dehydrator and students brought in foods to dehydrate - big success.  I'll get another post with pictures up later this week, documenting that adventure.

We had Ms Anne come in and model for us the music of those times, getting a chance to envision ourselves in that moment, doing what Laura and Carrie and Mary might have done (see that posting here).

Recently they discussed how Ma would spend an entire day doing a chore, like drying foods or making butter or mending. They thought about how it would take a whole day to make something like butter - something that we can just go to the grocery store and get when we need it.  Closer to our Thanksgiving break we'll be making our own butter...and bread!

I can't wait to see where this book and the kiddos lead our learning in the next few months.  I can guarantee you another few posts and updates as we continue this journey.  Mrs. Englebrecht and I already have a few ideas but we're waiting to see where the kids take us.

I really hope your child is talking to you about this experience as well as sharing with you their favorite key moments.  If not, use this post and the following posts to spark a conversation with your Cantrell's Class kiddo. And I also hope you continue to follow this amazing journey!

Mrs. Cantrell

Fiddle vs Violin

Did you know that a fiddle and a violin are the same instrument? Honestly, I didn't!  But that was just one of the learning moments I had when Ms Anne came to our class last week.  In our classroom, Mrs. Englebrecht has been reading Little House in the Big Woods (by Laura Ingles Wilder)  and we have been using that book to learn more about our world.  They have discussed bears, rag dolls, weather in Wisconsin, and soooo much more.   I'll save THAT for another post real soon.

But a few weeks ago they read in the book that Pa was playing his fiddle for the girls and Ma.  The class realized that we had several students in our room that were unfamiliar with what a fiddle was.   It just so happens that Ms Englebrecht's daughter plays the fiddle!  *You just might see her working at Silver Dollar City sometimes too, I hear! *   So Ms Anne graciously came to our classroom to show us what a fiddle was and how it was different from a violin.  

Do you know what makes those two instruments different?  NOTHING!!  There is just fiddle music and violin music...so if you're playing violin music (think Mozart) then it's a violin...if you're playing the fiddle (think of bluegrass music) then it's a fiddle!  Amazing, isn't it?!

The class really loved hearing her play, show the instruments and stopping to visualize themselves sitting in the cabin listening to Pa play fiddle music.

Here we have our eyes closed, visualizing what it might have been like

I do believe, though, that their FAVORITE part was getting to dance, just like we envisioned the girls doing while Pa played.

Be sure to ask your kiddo about this great guest speaker we had and see if they remember their favorite parts!