School Days!

My "Little House on the Prairie" picture

We joined some of our homeschool friends for a morning of school at the Ohio Historical Society. Traveling back in time we spent the morning in 1863! What a great day it was. The weather was beautiful and the kids had a wonderful time learning what it was like to be a pioneer and go to school. All of them really liked the one room school house, even though it was a lot like homeschooling with all of us together, the kids realized how easy they have it today. We don't have the rules and the punishments like they had then and they are very grateful for that!

In order to attend School Days we had some prep work to do. First we had to make our "copy books" which required stitching pages together to make a book. Lindy had so much fun doing this that she asked Kyle and Ethan if she could do their books for them!

Next we had to make our "ink" for the penmenship lesson. We squeezed all the juice out of blackberries and raspberries. After everyone took a turn beating the berries to a pulp, we added vinegar and salt to keep the ink from molding. We also had to get our period clothing ready. Our piano teacher who is also a fabulous seamstress made the girls their skirts. Plain shirts and pants for the boys and no tennis shoes (they didn't have those then!). The morning of school we had to pack our lunch, also in 1863 style. That means no peanut butter, jelly only! No brownies they hadn't been invented yet! Lots of fruit, pickles, breads, and water to drink. The hardest part of this was that we couldn't use plastic bags to put things in. No tupperware yet either. We cut apart brown paper lunch bags and wrapped all or food into little packages and tied them shut with yarn. Then it all went into a big wooden "basket". It was a lot of work!

Time for school! All the kids were so excited especially Lindy and Paige. I love this picture of Paige's face. She was so excited when the bell rang!

As the morning went on we learned a lot about the punishments. Kyle volunteered to try on the dunce cap. I was surprised that he didn't get a punishment during "school". I haven't heard him stay that quiet in a long time!

Lily and Rebecca were punished for getting their math problem wrong! They had to put their noses to the chalkboard and count to 100. Lily was laughing so hard! I am going to have to put this picture in the Brownie scrapbook!

Lindy had wonderful handwriting with her pen and ink. She had so much fun using it and got the hang of it really quickly.

Little Erin sat in the front row since the school is arranged with the youngest in the front and each row gets older. She was so proud to be included!

Ethan was "punished" for being "late" or the last one in from our brief recess. He had to hold 2 logs in front of the class and count to 20.

The final 2 in the spelling bee, Rebecca and Ethan, beat out the moms who participated. Ethan won! Spelling is his thing!

Look how little Erin's head looks in the front row!

The geography lesson was to name all the rivers in Ohio on the blackboard. Brandon got them all!

AnnMarie and Paige sharing their McGuffy Reader.

Molly, Erin, and Megan had their McGuffy Readers and had to stand in front of the class and read a word that they knew.

Kyle and Michael were in the 4th McGuffy Reader and had to read to the class.

Time in the excercise area!

Truly a wonderful experience. The girls really got a lot out of it since they had just done the American Girl Kirsten series in the fall which was set in the 1850's. What a wonderful way to learn about history!