Kansas Day 2016

The Moundridge Manor residents were joined by the 4th & 5th grades from the Garden View Christian School and their teacher, Heather Koehn for a Kansas Day celebration.  Today is the 115th birthday of the State of Kansas.  We sat in groups of 10 – a mix of residents and students – four tables were filled in this way.  First we went through a PowerPoint presentation of Kansas trivia and facts.  Also, there were some pictures and questions about Pioneer Life on the Kansas prairies.  After this we had a trivia test – students and residents alike offered the answers!  There were Kansas word scrambles and puzzles along with some Kansas pictures to color for anyway to work on or take home.  We then spent about fifteen minutes writing a story about several of the pioneer pictures – one was of several girls standing in front of a sod house and the other was of a man plowing a field with walk-behind plow and two horses.  The school children then sang ‘Home on the Range’, ‘My Kansas Land’ and several other songs.

Here are several of the their stories:  It would be fun to try plowing with horses.  The soil would have been hard to plow up.  Wilma’s grandfather plowed with a plow like this.  She remembers him plowing the field or garden – going round and round with two horses hooked onto the plow.  She was about six years old.  Her grandfather’s name was John.  The farmers wore bid straw hats for protection from the heat.  Her grandma would have a big meal ready for him when he came in for the evening.  Esther remembers her Uncle Floyd farming this way.  She guesses maybe 10 acres a day.  They started early in the morning and went until late in the evening.  Written by:  Students – Seth, Jensen, Darcen and room mother, Janelle; and residents – Wilma, Esther, Priscilla and Nina.

Another story:  There were no trees so they used sod to make a house.  Sod bricks were used and the sod was always to the outside.  Sod houses were built into the sides of the hills.  One side of the roof is ground level and the animals were free to be on top of the house.  All of these places were self-sustaining – no one had jobs.  It was lots of hard work!!  If it wasn’t too cold on Saturday night you would use the washtub for a bath – if it was too cold you just washed your feet.  Written by:  Students – Nicole and Kayanne and  room mother, Jalynne; and residents – Gene & Salome, Leroy, Martin, Clayton & Maxine, Osie and Beatrice.

We finished with a snack – nobody raised their hand to go back in time 155 years!