Nov. 21, 2006 - Quarter Horse Racine/Branding "Irons"
During our last week of our unit study theme of Obedience/Horses we studied the Wild West. One of the activities we did was to make our own branding "irons" from potatoes. The kids drew a design on the halved potatoes and then I cut them down to make a stamp and then they inked them on an ink pad and stamped them into a little branding booklet I made. We had first read about branding and running brands. After they finished stamping then I had Sam write the name of the brand on the same page and on the next page she made up a name for the Ranch it belonged to. At the end she stamped all the brands again and altered them to create running brands and named them as well. We put this booklet into our Lapbook, which I hope to post some time later.
Here, Jake was dressed up as a Knight, like usual. It's either that or a dragon. 
The kids are also racing the quarter mile race, like Quarter horses. They were disqualified if they crossed into the other horse's lane and as you can see, Jake thought it was a lot of fun to get disqualified. Sam on the other hand wanted him to stay in his own lane, but once she realized that she won, she got over it pretty quickly. We just used masking tape to make these racing lanes. The Konos book suggested doing it outside, which is another option. I don't remember why we didn't do that.
