Our final social studies unit for this year is studying about the pioneers. The students have been crazy about this subject! (Some of the girls have even come to school wearing braids like Laura Ingalls - it makes a teacher's heart swell to see her students responding to the lessons.)
This week the students were introduced to some pioneer activities. With assistance, we used a hammer and nail to pound holes into soup cans (Mrs. Murray & Julianne bravely sacrificed our fingernails and fingertips in the process.)
After the holes were punched, we put battery-operated tea lights in the bottom so they looked like punched-tine lanterns. What fun it was to see the light twinkle through the holes we had painstakingly produced moments before!
We also made hand-dipped candles. Mrs Murray heated candle wax in a double boiler using a large soup can and a pot of hot water. When the wax melted the kids were able to dip the ends of the string to create slightly lumpy, but beautiful candles!
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| logs cabins made out of pretzel sticks and milk cartons |
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| button tic-tac-toe! |
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Much of our learning came from the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. In "little House in the Big Woods," Laura describes making butter. On the day before our field trip, we made butter by pouring heavy cream in a small Tupperware container. We added a dash of salt and a few drops of juice from a grated carrot (for yellow coloring). Each child shook and shook their containers. And when they were tired of shaking....they shook some more. After about 10 minutes, lumps of butter and butter milk started forming in the containers. What an exciting moment! Later on, we baked biscuits from scratch. The butter and biscuits were packed for the next day's old-fashioned picnic.
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| reading from McGuffy's Primer |
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