My kiddos were beyond estatic today that they finally had a chance to ride on the big, yellow school bus to their field trip!
Look at those faces! Do you think they enjoyed their first bumpy ride experience? :)
We split into 2 groups for our tour. I had the younger bunch (K - 2nd grade). To start the tour we had to knock on the front door so our tour guide could invite us inside. Since Abbi is "door holder" this week, that simplified the decision of who got to do the knocking! :D
The lady showed them how to roll out dough to make pretzels.
They all got to try it :)....these were the 2 best pictures I had of inside. We were told not to use our flash, and well, *cough* even teachers sometimes forget to follow directions! (tsk, tsk)
Here would be a rather blurry picture of some of the finished products. *Sigh* It was so hard not to use a flash, but I was later informed that the reasoning behind this was that the bright flash could damage things in the house.
Because we visited in December, we heard a lot about their Christmas traditions in the 1700's. One of the things we learned about was Kristkindl, or Kris Kringle, which means "Christ Child" in German. Apparently, they say that this person would dress up totally in white and come riding on a donkey, and sneak in the houses through the key holes to deliver goodies to the children at Christmas time if they had been good. Of course, no child ever saw this Kristkindl deliver these goodies. So, yes, this idea of "Santa Claus" was even practiced in the 1700's. Soooooo...to finish off our tour, we had our own Kristkindl come for a visit. She asked each of the children if they had been good little children, had been nice to their brothers and sisters, and kind to their pets. If they said yes, she would give them each an apple. Well, apparently, all the children were good little children this year so they all got an apple. ;) Sooooo...that was interesting. We also heard that back then they didn't believe in working AT ALL between Christmas and New Year's. That means that they didn't even change their clothes or *cough* undergarments during that time. I am not sure of the reasoning behind this....start off the new year with a stink??!! I know the lady said that they were afraid of getting sores all over their body if they did change their clothes during this time. (I would think the opposite would be true!) We were hoping none of the children would go home and tell their parents that they couldn't change their clothes because of hearing about this!! Yep, I said it once, and I will say it again...I was definitely born in the right century!
The group standing in front of the Troxell-Steckel house with our 2 tour guides.
1 comment:
Neato - Hey I like the blog background you chose! Very festive!
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