Can I begin by saying it has been YEARS AND YEARS since I have had children at a young enough age that I had to be in the car caravan lane for the drop-off zone?! To you moms and dads who do the drop-off/pick-up on a daily basis, my hats off to you! I forgot that it can be bumper to bumper and take 25 minutes just to crawl your car up to where the drop off zone is!
Silly me, I set my Tom Tom ((Actually, it's now called Billy-Billy because I installed the Billy Connolly voice on it!))to the school address so I wouldn't get lost going over to Lewisville. It shouldn't be that hard, but I wanted to be sure I got there. I probably should have driven one more block and bypassed the school drop off line and turned into another parking lot, but what did I know? I trusted Billy-Billy to get me there. S-L-O-W-L-Y for the last 1/2 mile!
I was ever so grateful that I was not the only parent looking like they had just stepped off the set of Little House on the Prairie! Kids had dressed up too, and it was just darling. The 3rd graders had been studying the early days in Colonial America, and on into the 1800s. There were all kinds of demos going on, from washing clothes with a wash board to making butter, weaving, tin punch, candle making, etc...
Martha Claire and Karen and I manned ((or womaned!)) the Quilting area. It was really fun telling the kids how important quilts were in the early Americas and on forward to today. They learned the difference between a quilt and a blanket! They learned to recognize a few basic patchwork patterns, learned about the different tools that were used, watched me doing some hand quilting and then got to try their own hand at hand quilting using the stab stitch on a sample hoop...and then over to the flannel board for some block designing with some pre-cut shapes.
IT WAS LIKE HERDING CATS!! >^,,^<
((Yes, be sure to click the link above...I died laughing at this when I was doing a search for a 'herding cats'image!))
Martha Claire showing a group of boys how to stab-stitch! The boys seemed to like this activity better than the girls did, and it was hard to get them to put the needles DOWN to move to the next station!
Busy Little Hands....trying to make their stitches small and close together. It's not as easy as it looks, as they soon found out!
The girls worked together to design some Ohio Star blocks on the flannel board with pre-cut triangles and squares. They found out it wasn't so easy to turn those triangles right either!
Busy little fingers....it's fun to watch the interaction between the kids. I can easily fast forward these kids a few years and tell you who the bossy ones will be...LOL!!
By the time 12:30 rolled around and the last group had passed our station, we were ready for
I am so happy I went! And I do believe I earned every minute of that 2+ hour nap I took when I got home. I decided there would be no stops on the way home either, cuz I couldn't bear to be seen looking like Carolyn Ingalls out in public, not to mention that I must have been wearing 20lbs more clothing than normal! Good grief! No wonder the ladies got the vapors..I'm just glad we didn't have to deal with corsets :cD
Thanks for the invite Karen! If you do it next year...gimme a call....I'm game to give it another go!
18 comments:
Sounds like a fun day!! Thanks for sharing our love of this craft with the future!
I remember doing this years ago, AND that energy level! ;) Love your's and Karen's dresses!!
Hi Bonnie, you look great! looks like it was a great day out..oh yeahhhh soo glad those corset things went out..some modern day things we can be very very grateful for! When are you coming to Aus? lol
cheers
That looks like something that I would really enjoy doing!
What a blessing for you!
How fun! And you look adorable in your outfit :)
I'm sure the children loved the activities!
Whew! We survived!! What fun...thanks again for helping out :)
(and oh, hahahah!! My word verification word is RESTS!)
Kudos to you!! I used to volunteer a lot - it's no walk in the park, but I loved it! You look "earthly" LOL!!!! A well deserved nap!
I can totally relate to your event as I too participated in Pioneer Days at the local elem. school for several years. I demonstrated hand piecing a stone's throw from a log cabin. Students then constructed their own 9 patches. Spent a lot of time rethreading needles. Boys always seemed to do better at that age!
Looks like fun all around!
Oh Bonnie! You brought back such great memories when my 4 were in 4th grade and they did pioneer days. And 3rd grade they did a reading section on a quilt. So I would go in for one afternoon and they hand stitched blocks and then I turned it into a quilt for the class. The teacher would then let each child take the quilt home for 2 nights to share with thier family and write a story about it. She was always nice enough to make a copy of all the stories for me and make me a little book. Oh what good memories!
I forgot to say that it was always the boys who loved it! They were always the ones who would go home and beg mom for more fabric and then sew little quilts for their army men or stuffed animals. I always thought that was so cute. The boys alwyas got into it more!
I did a similar program for many years, when my children were in gradeschool. Some of them (adults now) still remind me and say they have the nine patches they made by hand. It was fun to see them excited by their history.
Thanks, Bonnie, for the Herding Cats link! It's hillarious! Good think you didn't have to get on ahorse and herd something at aOld Timey Day!
Ooh Bonnie - you look really authentic in your outfit ;-). I love it. I must say - looking at the 3rd graders makes me long back for the years my son was there. Don't remember Old Timey days, but do remember him going as a cowboy (must be cos we lived on the West Coast - Wild West LOL)
What a lovely day you must have had and kudos to the school for putting on/sponsoring this event.
Your outfit is great, and the herding cats video a hoot! The cowboy with the lint roller....priceless!
Looking forward to tomorrow's blog!
regan
What a cool thing to do. My son had been doing 1800's tools at schools in Greenville county with the Y.
Looks like a great time! I almost laughed myself out of my chair watching the cat herding video!
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