"The Beehive State"

After completing our Safety Kids Unit, I decided it was time to come back to Geography again and begin our Individual States Unit. Originally I wanted to go through all of the fifty states. I bought several "50 states" fact books, a 50 states coloring book, a 50 states cook book, one of those quarter collecting boards, a state sticker map, and laminated maps for the kids to mark as we traveled to various states. With all of our supplies in place, I then went about picking the order of the states we would study. Since we kicked off our states week the week of July 24th, we decided to commence by studying the wonderful state of Utah.

We began by covering the Indian and pioneer heritage that Utah has. While we spent some time on the Ute Indians, most of our history lesson centered around the Mormon pioneers. In fact, we started our discussion with Joseph Smith, the prophet of the restoration, and worked our way all the way through until the saints entered the Salt Lake Valley and Brigham Young declared: This is the right place! The kids knew most of this information already, but it was a wonderful chance to review that heritage that belongs as much to us as it does the state of Utah. As part of this history review, we again created a poster board of us at church history sites, this time in the form of a chronological time line. After living on the east coast for a year, we are lucky to have visited almost every church history site there is including: Sharon Vermont--birthplace of Joseph Smith, Palmyra, Harmony Pennsylvania--Joseph and Emma's first home and restoration of the priesthood, Fayette New York--organization of the church, Kirtland, Ohio, Liberty, Independence, and Nauvoo. Here is a shot of our poster board time line.



As you can see, it stops after showing pictures of us in Nauvoo. We didn't end the poster board there; however, since we will soon have more to add. In September our family is going to make a trip back to Nauvoo, and then follow the Mormon trail all the way into the Salt Lake Valley. We will camp our way across the country from Nauvoo, to Winter Quarters, to Martin's Cove, and on through Immigration Canyon. Someday we want to make the trek in covered wagons, but this is the best we can do for now.

In honor of the pioneer trek, we not only planned our own trek for our family vacation, but decided that we needed to have a "symbollic trek" that actually correlated with our weeks of study and with the 24th of July. So, after a few days of reading and reading and reading Mormon history, we decided to make some Mormon history of our own. Dad and the kids worked hard to construct the frame for a covered wagon, and I sewed the canvas cover.



Then we got to the near impossible task of actually loading our wagon. Our journey would only be for one night--July 23rd to July 24th, but since our wagon was somewhat smaller than those the pioneers used, I figure it was actually pretty comparable. And what a nightmare it was to try and pack it. We managed our tent, one pillow, a sheet and blanket, all of our food and cookware for dinner and breakfast the following morning, our pajamas, and our scriptures. It took quite some time to get it all sorted out, to decide what absolutely had to come and what we could leave, and to prepare to make our trek. All in all, I think I appreciated the exercise the most, and truly felt the pangs of leaving things behind. I wasn't the only one who got into it though. As I gathered our food together, the kids stood by the window and pleaded with me to hurry because "the mobs were coming". Then, when we were finally loaded, our wagon threatening to burst, I think a tear escaped Maddi's little eyes. We really felt like we were leaving our home, never to return. Here's a shot of our littlest pioneer child standing next to the loaded wagon.




With one last farewell, we began our trek around and around and around the block.





The kids were dressed in pioneer attire, and you can only imagine the looks we drew as we "walked and walked and walked." This again gave me new found appreciation for the pioneers. I only went around the blocks a few times, with the kids doing most of the work of pulling the wagon, but even with that little amount of walking I felt sore and tired from carrying the baby, and unbelievably hot! I was glad when we finally came back to our back yard and decided to camp for the night.



And camp we did, but not without making a true pioneer dinner first--or at least our idea of a pioneer dinner: fresh trout we had caught ourselves, blueberries, homemade wheat bread we had made the day before--complete with hand churned butter, (this had been part of our pioneer children chores and lifestyle lesson) and some zucchini from our garden. All of it was carefully cooked over the fire, and it was so tasty. After dinner, we settled onto the hard ground inside of our tent, and went quickly to sleep.

That night, in the middle of the night, we had another true pioneer experience. We awoke with a start to a terrible storm that blew in with a vengeance. It came from out of nowhere, and gave us all quite a fright. I hurried in with the baby, and by the time I got back outside the wind had picked up something fierce. Nick was carrying stuff up to the house, and the screaming children took a tumble as the wind rolled the tent. There was no time to rescue the kids though, the first order of business was to get the fire extinguished before we started the whole cornfield on fire. We had left the coals in the fire pit when we went off to bed (not smart!) and when the wind picked up it sent them ablaze. The flames reached well over ten feet, and would have burnt everything in sight if the rain hadn't appeared only seconds later. But appear it did, and it poured. We ran around like crazy trying to get the kids and supplies inside. I was convinced we were going to die, overcome by the elements. Actually, I was sure we were all being picked up by a massive tornado! It was so frightening! But after much fear and craziness, we all soon found ourselves safe and dry and warm inside the walls of our home--a place the pioneers never would have had the luxury of fleeing to in such a storm. It was another powerful lesson, and one we talked a lot about the next morning over our skillet cornbread and blueberries and cream. It was our own little Mormon history indeed, and we capped it off with a big Pioneer Day celebration. We invited all of the members in the neighborhood--a total of 13 families--over for a BBQ that night and requested that everyone bring either family recipes or "Traditional Utah food". As a result, we had a smattering of jellos, including green jello (no carrots though), some funeral potatoes , and other comically Mormon cuisine. We visited and ate and then roasted marshmallows and had a firework show. It was a meaningful way for us to study and commemorate the true pioneer heroes that had entered the Salt Lake Valley on that very day so many year before.

While talking about and recreating Utah history was a fabulous start to our Utah week, it was not the end of our Utah Unit. With the history in place, we were then free to discuss all sorts of things about Utah from it's nickname of "the Beehive State" (We actually paused here and spent a few days talking about bees, studying how they make honey, dissecting flowers and learning about pollination, etc. This was the perfect way to get some science overlap. And bees are more amazing than you know. Sometime you should ask Nick to demonstrate a bee waggle dance and explain it's significance. You'll be down right amazed!), to the Transcontinental railroad (we'll visit Promontory Point on our Utah trip as well), to discussing the capitol, state flower, tree, bird, etc, and to reading about how Utah residents eat twice as much candy as any other state--a fact that our states cookbook attributed to Mormons' candy-making activities within their homes every Monday night! Ha! The kids loved delving into all sorts of topics; however, I think their favorite part of these discussions was the day they received a package from their grandparents out in Utah. This package contained all sorts of Utah items including: a real piece of honeycomb, lye soap, pioneer money, a golden spike, rocks from the Rocky Mountains, glass from some Utah ghost towns, and of course, some Salt Water Taffy from the Great Salt Lake! The kids, as you can see in this photo, just loved getting the educational and exciting present!



Thanks Grandma and Grandpa Hoskins! And thanks be to God for protecting those righteous men and women who sacrificed so much to cross the plains and eventually gained religious freedom in the land of Deseret. We love our pioneer heritage and our religious and family ties to the wonderful state of Utah!