Pioneer Day

The Quilting Bee Station - run by me - The girls are eager to get started.

 This month for our homeschool co-op we decided to have it be a pioneer day. We have kind of started a tradition now of having a very complicated, full day with the parents teaching (often we have the kids give reports) for the last month. Last year we had our Minnesota day which started this tradition.

I have lots of pictures to share so I will just try to narrate about our day as we go through the pictures. It was a lot of fun,  some good learning and a lot of work. :-)

 It was a pretty chilly morning (in the 30's) but we started outside around a soup pot (that was over a flame). Tara had brought the soup stock and everybody brought something to go into it (mainly veggies). It was a kind of fun way to work together to make our lunch. Tara also shared a scripture and prayed to start our morning. She shared a button soup story (like stone soup) and then the scripture about all the parts of the church body being important. While this was going on we also had cream being shaken in jars to make butter for our lunch.

Then the kids were divided into 5 groups to rotate around to 6 different stations (having one less group meant the teachers could all have a 15 minute break at some point to go peek in on the other stations).

 This was the clothes washing station. In it the kids got to experience using bar soap, washboards and a wringer which was a big hit.

 This was the candle making station. Each child got to dip a set of candles. In 15 minutes however the candles didn't get very fat.

Outside we had the Archery and Tomahawk throwing station. Two dads and and older boy were in charge of it and were very careful to keep it safe.

 Since it was cold and because we found out we couldn't shoot since our church building got annexed and is now in the city limits we had the blackpowder gun demonstration inside. Aaron found that the guns were heavier than he had thought.

We also had a spinning station. Not as in turning round and round but rather using a drop spindle and wool to make yarn. Linda (one of the moms ) likes to spin and generally uses a spinning wheel but thought it would be better to use drop spindles for this day. I have used a drop spindle before but when I tried it quickly this time I couldn't seem to get a hang of it. I will try again another time!

 Then my station: Welcome to a Quilting Bee! Mara and I pieced the quilt to be quilted and then another family had a quilting frame that we could use. Everybody quilted - boys and girls alike and some of the boys were just as good and better than many of the girls. Quilting with the 2-4 year old group was pretty interesting but fun! I brought along the braided rug that I had made earlier (just to make my area look nicer).

 Some quilters found it easier to go under the quilt some of the time. :-)

 Stitching very carefully!

 After everybody had visited all the stations then Juanita gave a cheese making demonstration, we worked at getting the butter finished and then we ate lunch. 3 of us moms had brought along homemade bread and then we had the soup we had made and fresh butter and cheese. It was pretty yummy!

 Megan enjoying her lunch.

 After lunch it was time to make ice cream. Everybody took a turn cranking it.

 All the families had brought different ingredients to make the ice cream.

 It was pretty yummy.

 We also had a taffy pull. Kate made it and everybody got to pull a piece.

 Many of them gave up on the pulling before it got very white but everybody enjoyed it in whatever stage they ate it.

 Megan was especially fond of quilting. After the big events were over my girls and I had fun doing a little quilting together.

Learning pioneer type skills are so much fun and can be very useful too. What pioneer skill would you most like to learn or do you really enjoy using?

I will be linking this to some parties on my sidebar.