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Jul. 3, 2009
Field Trip to Motherwell Homestead National Park
I took Janney and Asher on their first field trip to Motherwell Homestead National Historic Park yesterday. This was with a fairly new homeschool group, with young kids. I've met some of the mums through the Babywearing group I joined this winter, and some of the mums I've met on Facebook, and some new ones too. I invited my friend Marie to join us with her kids too.
The tour guides - Shane and Sarah, first engaged the kids by getting them into costume, and then playing a little game about farm animals.
Asher behaved much like Myles used to - not wanting to participate, shying away from the crowd, hiding behind me etc. I let him be, not forcing him to participate... notice there aren't many boys in these photos, that's because most of the boys headed to the play park instead of participating.. I let Asher go play in the park too.
Elias hung out in my sling on my back, there were so many babies in slings on mommies backs or fronts, and two dads came, nice to see them carrying babies too.
After the warm up game, we headed to the buildings. First a storage shed that housed sleds and wagons.
Can you imagine riding 100 miles to Regina in this? It took the Regina families just over an hour to drive to Motherwell from the city in their modern vans, a trip to the city in this buggy must have been a 4-5 hour journey. From there Mr. Motherwell must have taken a train to Ottawa to sit in parliament.
Shane shared with me, that Mr. Motherwell quit politics because of the bilingual issue. He wanted Saskatchewan - or the whole country - to be bilingual. Had Saskatchewan had bilingual education, Saskatchewan would have been a much more powerful province in the country, as one needs to be bilingual to have power in Ottawa - to be Prime Minister definitely. But there are so few French speaking Saskatchewaners. Very interesting! Such vision in Mr. Motherwell, such lack of vision in the politics of the day.
Then Sarah, our other interpreter, took us to the house to show us around. When Mr. Motherwell arrived, he built himself a little log house, then built the stone part of the barn. Not until the barn was built did he build this house, and then the summer kitchen was added the following year. He married his first wife the year he built the house, she had two children and died young, of a respiratory disease. Mr. Motherwell later married his second wife, who ran the farm while he was away being a politician.
Washing up in the kitchen before entering the house with all those farm smells.
Summer kitchen equipped with all the tools of the day
 
The lovely dining room layed out to feed the family
Kids playing crokanole in the livingroom
3D Glasses in the study/piano room
The daughter's bedroom
The aunt's bedroom
Asher playing Crokanole
The we moved to the barn, where Asher was much more comfortable. Joshua caught a chicken (a maturing chick really, they were still quite small)
Janney got brave and went to collect her own chicken
Miss Suzy the pig is expecting a litter of piglets, apparently last year the pig had 14 piglets, I wonder how many Miss Suzy will have
The Jersey cow has a calf, but she shares her milk with the farm.
A pair of work horses. These two are the real farmers, they pull the plow to work all 20 acres of land.
Shane let everyone have a climb on the tractor before taking us upstairs to the hayloft, which he told us was built in 2 days, after which was a dance. Mr. Motherwell was away during this work, and was quite displeased to hear his neighbours took advantage and were consuming alcohol on his property. He took the time to let him know of his displeasure - a politician who was not afraid to speak his mind, and stick to his morals, even if they weren't popular.
After the tour of the barn, we went back to the park for lunch, which gave the kids lots of play time, and time for Elias to get down and walk around.. watermelon in hand!
 After lunch we participated in some hands on learning activities.
Gardening
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Jul. 4, 2009 - Awesome....
Blessings,
JEN