Jillian choose the Renaissance Era and Dayna spoke about the pioneers of the 1900's.
The Renaissance Festival Poem
Dresses of flowing colors,
Children running around to look at
everything.
Tents filled with trinkets, silks, and food.
Talking and laughter all around,
The smell of bread and rolls from the bakery,
and
The smell of dirt, dung, and smoke everywhere
else.
Sounds from the animals, hammers,
instruments, and merchants,
Games of Archery, Jousting, and Sword
Fighting.
Musicians playing with Actors, and Gypsies
dancing,
Farmers selling their crops,
Shepherds leading their sheep and cattle to the
auction.
Fantasy Arabian Riders dancing on horseback,
This is the sights, sounds, and smells of a
Renaissance festival.
Jillian Beatty
A Day on the
Prairie
Living on the prairie in the 1800's, probably the first thing you
think of is the land. Stretching as far as the eye can see, cloud’s
shadows dancing across the prairie, the wind blowing on the green
grass as if it were waves on the sea. The smells of fresh air and
morning dew fill your lungs, as you walk out your cabin door. On a normal weekday the sun would be just getting up, the golden sky flowing with color. Finishing your morning chores before breakfast, you’d get dressed, make the beds, fetch the water, sweep the cabin floor, milk the cow, feed all your animals, and many other things. After you were done the morning chores your Mother would call you in to wash up for breakfast. Breakfast would consist of corn, oat meal, bread, milk, cheese, and butter. After breakfast you would wash the dishes, while Mother made your lunch. Then when your are finished washing the dishes, you would gather your books and walk to school.
School houses were not the same on the frontier, as today. They were simple log cabins with a big box stove in the middle. Students sat in two to three rows of benches and worked on big long wooden tables. The floor was dirt, and the windows were covered with greased paper, instead of glass. The main 3 subjects you would learn would be the, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. You would have to supply you own slate and chalk. Books were scarce and you'd often would have to share a speller or reader. There was only one teacher to teach all children. Often times the older children would help teach the younger children, if the teacher was busy. In the pioneer days school was strict. If a child did not obey, they might get slapped with a ruler or a stick on the hand. After school if you needed chalk, school supplies, or Mother told you to pick up something you would go to the General Store. The pioneers usually did not have money so, they'd traded their extra crops or other things they made for the supplies they needed. This was called the barter system. Coffee grinders, rugs, clothing, sets of dishes, candles, lanterns, butter moulds, and food were the things pioneers usually bought. They also would purchase tools like animal traps, hoes, hammers, hatchets, shovels, axes, grinding stones, and ropes. The General Store would have had everything, even candy, which was very rare back then. Finally you would go home. Pa would be home from the field soon, so you would help Mother make dinner. You'd make a fire for her, gather vegetables from the garden, feed the animals, milk the cow again, set the table, and wait. When Pa comes home, your family would sit down and you would tell then all about your day at school and share dinner together. You would eat potatoes, corn, carrots, cheese, bread, and butter. After dinner you would get into your white night shirt and crawl into bed. You would slowly fall asleep, to the slight ringing of the bugs outside, waiting for another day to do it all over again.
By Dayna Beatty
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