CALIFORNIA CAMPFIRES 1991-1992
The things we let the kids do during this school year remind me of a conversation Captain Von Trapp has with his governess in The Sound of Music:
Captain: Do you mean to tell me that my children have been roaming about Salzburg dressed up in nothing but some old drapes?!
Maria: (affirming) Umm, hmm, and having a marvelous time.
Captain: They have uniforms.
Maria: Straitjackets, if you'll forgive me...Children cannot do all the things they're supposed to do if they have to worry about spoiling their precious clothes.
Maria: (affirming) Umm, hmm, and having a marvelous time.
Captain: They have uniforms.
Maria: Straitjackets, if you'll forgive me...Children cannot do all the things they're supposed to do if they have to worry about spoiling their precious clothes.
My sentiments exactly!
This year the kids ran around like wild Indians and had a marvelous time.
We schooled again with Katie and her kids. Since Indian children ran around in the buff, Katie came up with the inquiry to run outside naked for a few seconds. She told her kids that they could do it just to see what it felt like. Their family lived pretty much in the middle of nowhere, so a few of her kids tried that inquiry! I don't remember if any of ours did, except Hal IV wore just a loin cloth around the house at times!
When we began this school year Amber was 9, Jasmyn was 7, Hal was 4 ½ , and Chase was 1 ½.
Rationale
Strangely enough, I don’t think we wrote a rationale.
This is what happens when you create a curriculum year after year without a manual—you incorporate some things and forget others. This happened many times over the course of 24 years. Looking back I would have loved a manual listing how-to’s and what worked and what didn’t, but I didn’t think to write one at the time.
Katie and I chose to do a year on California history because our two oldest girls were at the age when public schools normally teach state history, and we thought it would be a good continuation of history from the colonial year.
The year was organized around three peoples/eras of California history: the Indians, the Spanish, and the American pioneers. We had three components with a brain week introduction, though we only completed the first two components. (Karen drew the campfire for us and I did the rest).
California Campfires components:
Tomahawks and Totem Poles
Hacienda Haven
California or Bust
Getting ready with costumes and a snake
I sewed Indian costumes for Amber, Jasmyn, Hal, Chase and myself. These were so easy because the material didn’t need hemmed or finished in any way—we just sewed seams and cut fringe. Amber and Jasmyn and I also put some beads and decoration on our dresses.
Karen's home--a visitor shared her expertise of Indian musical instruments:
Indians meet the Renaissance--at Karen's home:
We lived in Hesperia at the time, and a few weeks before school started I drove Hal to work (we only had one vehicle). As I was driving home I saw a snake slither across the road. I quickly pulled the truck over, and ran up the dirt embankment, following the snake’s trail. Just before the snake disappeared out of sight down a hole, I reached in, grabbed the snake by the tail, yanked it out and held it gingerly. I was shaking all over, but I had caught a snake for my kids to study!
I called a young man in our ward (the one who had impersonated the quiet Thomas Jefferson ad few months before), and he came over with a medium-size aquarium which became our snake’s home for the next month or so before we let him go. The things I did for the sake of my kids’ education. There are not many things that would have induced me to run after a snake and put my hand down it’s hole. (Before I grabbed the snake I was pretty sure that it had no rattles, so I didn’t think about it as being brave, just passionately silly about my children’s education).
Indian Princess, Lokai (me), with Chase and Hal IV
Year Story and Song
Lokai, an Indian maiden, lived in a star and kept watch over a righteous people who were led to a beautiful land. This was the story of our adventure—Lokai watched over the people who came to California, which was also a blessed land. (Katie got this legend from the Lokai LDS girls’ camp in Southern California.)
The song has two lines long with no accompaniment. It was perfect.
Lokai, Lokai,
I see Lokai
As she sails through the sky in her star
Lokai
Opening Night
Our opening night was a campfire at the Sinclair home. We let the kids roast their own meal over the fire using sticks: marinated meat strips, bread dough, and baked apples. We shoved an entire apple on the end of the sticks and when they were roasted we rolled them in cinnamon sugar.
Lokai came down from her star and visited us. She told us that she would be watching us all year long. Lokai also came at the end of the Indian component and at the end of the year and the kids didn’t want her to go.
Lokai visited our school and gave each child a Lokai star bead, which they could wear around their necks.
Key Points
Back in the old days, we wrote curriculum by hand and made copies for each other. There's something extra simple about writing key points by hand--you don't get an overload of information this way--
Key Points
Back in the old days, we wrote curriculum by hand and made copies for each other. There's something extra simple about writing key points by hand--you don't get an overload of information this way--
When Katie’s family was in charge of key points, we would gather at our house and vice versa. I hadn’t remembered this detail, until I saw the pattern in the videos and photos of our school visitors. (The kids decided if and when they wanted to wear costumes).
Visitors
Looking back at all the pictures I see that we invited no one from outside our group to be a visitor. We had plenty of visitors just the same.
Amber taught us about Indian musical instruments:
We made Indian musical shakers out of yucca plants:
Anna, Amber, Hal, Jasmyn, Jonathon (Katie's older daughter was in public school part of this year)
Most of our visitors were the children who came dressed up and shared the key points each week to our little group. I didn’t remember this little tidbit until I looked back at all those pictures which I don’t have in our family scrapbook—I suppose that those pictures are all in my children’s journals, and I didn’t see them until I scanned the negatives and recently watched the home movies. I wish I had remembered this because I would have my children be visitors more often and share the key points. C’est la vie!
Little Bear (Hal) taught us about Indian games
Playing an Indian game, which usually taught an important life skill:
I was Queen Calafia, fictional queen of the legendary island of California. I wrapped a sheet around myself and threw on a few shell necklaces, and carried a large shell. I really didn’t do much of anything, but the kids were captivated. (I only know this because I watched the video of the children).
Katie came as Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza, and led the children on a hunt for gold (and inquiries).
Holding up their inquiries and treasure:
Later, Jasmyn reenacted our treasure hunt--"I claim this land for Spain!"
During this school year I made a scarecrow for our porch for Halloween, which gave me an idea for a visitor. Katie and I didn’t have a visitor to play Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, so when Halloween was over I dressed him up as a conquistador and held him up in front of me and talked for him. The kids seemed to enjoy this visitor--they even shook his hand. This just shows that anyone or anything could be a visitor, as I discovered through the years!
Here is a Cabrillo key point mind map:
Francisco, (Amber), teaches us about the trade winds:
Hal came as Sir Francis Drake and sang I Am The Monarch of The Sea, from Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore
Things we did
We ate cactus, we walked in the desert and learned the local Indian tribes and the native plants and animals.
Amber eating cactus:
We caught lizards and a toad. We made tortillas and ate Mexican food. We made adobe and a model of a mission. I learned that the big, brown horse-droppings-looking things under our Joshua tree were really seed pods!
Making adobe by stomping mud and straw together:
School is the Game of Life
After school our children played school. They loved the adventure of the year and continued to live it throughout the day.
Rock Day
Once we did an impromptu Rock Day. The book Everybody Needs a Rock, was perfect for our Indian component, and I thought this would be fun.
We sang, O Thou Rock of Our Salvation, and talked about how our Savior is the rock we should build our lives upon.
Once we did an impromptu Rock Day. The book Everybody Needs a Rock, was perfect for our Indian component, and I thought this would be fun.
We sang, O Thou Rock of Our Salvation, and talked about how our Savior is the rock we should build our lives upon.
We learned about the three kinds of rock and the memory hand motions—metamorphic, sedimentary, and igneous.
We read the book and made our own Rock Soup with a metamorphic rock, so it wouldn’t go to pieces or explode in the pot.
Field Trips
I think we only went as a group on one field trip again this year, (besides the trip to Karen's home). Exposure is important, but when children are so young the exposure doesn’t have to be far-away, big, or expensive. Katie and I didn’t have access to field trip information or we may have taken our children on more field trips. But looking back at all this, it was much less stress to just create the magic at our homes with the ‘wooden sword and the feathered cap’ so to speak. An ‘inkling of that and they’re yours’ is so true when children are so young.
We went to the Mojave River Valley Museum, in Barstow as a group. To me, Barstow was sooooooooo far away. I wasn’t used to driving all over Southern California and it did seem a long distance away, even though it is only 30 minutes away.
While visiting Uncle Bret we went to Sutter’s Fort. This visit wasn’t that memorable to my children because we hadn’t studied the pioneer aspect of California. It would have been much more exciting if we had. This just shows that ‘covering material’ as Susan Kovalik points out, is practically a waste of time. Just visiting Sutter’s Fort, without key points before or afterward was not as productive. But we went there with Uncle Bret’s family on the spur of the moment, and that was a good enough reason to go.
At the end of our school year our family visited the Santa Barbara Mission. I had grown up in California but had never visited a mission, so this was new for me as well.
Jasmyn helps create the model of the Santa Barbara Mission:
Amber and Jasmyn made everything from scratch, even the roof tiles were made the same way the Indians made mission tiles, by putting clay onto logs, only we used dowels instead of logs:
Santa Barbara Mission:
In the mission chapel Jasmyn pulled down the little kneeling bench or the Prie Dieu, and pretended to pray. She probably really did pray, but never had done so in such an auspicious manner. This began a life-long Bradley obsession with Catholic chapels and cathedrals.
After visiting the mission we went to Summerland Beach and then at dinner at the Big Yellow House. This visit began the Summerland Beach and Big Yellow House Bradley tradition as well, though we never did visit Santa Barbara mission again.
Closing Day
Our closing day was a Mexican fiesta, including a piñata. 
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