Oklahoma History - Northeastern

Tucked into an area that was plagued with murder, money, and mystery*, Woolaroc is a throw back to another era of Oklahoma history...

Woolaroc!  The name is a conglomeration of woods, lakes, and rocks.  At the entrance, they give you a map showing general areas for the various wildlife, and a nice CD to narrate your drive along the five-mile trail.

We saw deer, longhorns, ostriches, emus, and bison wandering freely and undisturbed.  The ranch is designed to make you feel as though you've stepped back in time at least a hundred years, and it does a good job of conveying that spirit.  Along the route, we came to the Mountain Men camp, one of the living history exhibits.

The boys learned about fur trappers and traders, the Mountain Men of the early 1800's, and how they co-existed peacefully with the Native American tribes.  They also learned to throw tomahawks, make a pouch from a turtle shell, and stretch beaver skin.  It was hard to top the Mountain Man exhibit, which was by far their favorite stop on the trail!  We stopped by the petting barn, playground, and bison exhibits.

The mission of the Woolaroc Museum, built by Frank Phillips, founder of Phillip 66, was to preserve the western spirit of Oklahoma for future generations.  Half of the museum focuses on Native American heritage (this part was closed for renovations during our visit), while the other half focuses on the oil industry.

One piece of the museum that we found fascinating was the 1927 Dole Air Race.  Of the eighteen planes entered to fly from northern California to Hawaii, only two landed safely.  Phillips entered the race as a publicity stunt, to get his new oil products into the spotlight; and he won the race in 26 hours, 17 minutes, earning him the $25,000 first prize. 

At his "getaway lodge," which could double for a good-sized hotel, you will see numerous trophies on the walls.  It's difficult to see, but the elephant head on the wall came from the Ringling Brothers circus.  During a poker game one night, he won the entire circus, but later allowed the circus owner to win it back.  When the elephant died, Mr. Ringling had it stuffed and sent to Mr. Phillips as a token of the 'time he owned the circus.'

Not surprising, the thing that the boys remembered the most was the Mountain Men exhibit.  When we got home, they immediately went to make their own costumes and set out on a trip.  They brought their pack, pup tent, (toy) guns, and other necessary items for being successful trappers!  Hubby and I taught them the Ballad of Davy Crockett to sing while they hiked...

Oklahoma Hills Resources

• OERB Homeroom
• DIY - Mountain Man Costume
• Mountain Men digital story (free film)
• Phillips 66 Museum - education (free)
• Discover Oklahoma Woolaroc film
• Mountain men - writing poetry (free)
• Mixed-up Mountain Men study (MM in Utah) (free)
• Westward Movement curriculum (free)
• History of Oklahoma lapbook
• O is for Oklahoma
• Sally of Woolaroc
• Mountain Men: Season 1
• **Wonder why the asterisk?  We're anticipating the release of the movie Killers of the Flower Moon, which is currently being filmed in the area.  We've created a novel study for high school students!

Sounder & Sharecropping (Novel Study)

After the Civil War ended, the "forty acres and a mule" policy gave newly-freed African-Americans the opportunity to work their own land.  However, President Andrew Johnson ordered that land to be returned to its previous owners as one of the first Reconstruction acts.  This left the freedman in the position having to work another man's land....

Sharecropping is a type of farming in which families rent small plots of land from a landowner in return for a portion of their crop, to be given to the landowner at the end of each year.  In the rural South, it was typically, but not always, practiced by former slaves.  Whether the sharecropping family was black or white, it was still a form of legalized slavery.

In 1865, the Freedman's Bureau, which was created to help former slaves, had to tell them that they could either sign a contract to be a sharecropper or be forced to leave the land.  While it did allow for freedom and autonomy, sharecropping often left families owing more money to the landowner than they were able to repay.

Some families were able to get the money to move up the ladder from sharecropping to owning land, but many were not and were left to perpetuate the cycle.  Though difficult to obtain for many, education was often seen as a way to break the cycle.

Our spine read for this unit is Sounder

Access the complete unit in the American History Novel Studies Bundle!

Includes sixteen unit studies covering American History. Each unit addresses a new topic, spanning the Revolutionary War to Vietnam.  Each unit has introductory text, which will give the student basic background information about the topic at hand.

• There are photographs and illustrations, and we have also included primary documents when available.
• After this text, there are featured videos, which augment the background information and help make the topic more accessible for more visual students.
• You will also find a short list of reading books, including a featured novel that the unit builds upon.
• There are vocabulary words, places, and people to identify.
• Reading comprehension, critical thinking questions, and writing assignments are included.
• We add fun with hands-on activities and extra videos to watch that will bring the era to life.
• Some units also have cooking projects.

These studies are directed toward upper grades students, but some have resources for younger students so that the whole family can work together. Our family has used unit studies as curriculum for many years, and we hope that your family will enjoy these, too!

Product sample:  Paper Son & Angel Island Immigration  & Within These Lines & Japanese Internment

Includes:

• Casualties of War & Vietnam War
• No Promises in the Wind & the Great Depression
• Out of the Dust & the Dust Bowl
• The Watsons Go to Birmingham & Civil Rights
• Dusty Sourdough & Alaska
• The King of Mulberry Street & Ellis Island Immigration
• Paper Son & Angel Island Immigration
• The Red Menace & McCarthyism
• Johnny Tremain & Faces of the American Revolution
• Sounder & Sharecropping
• World War II Code Talkers
• Flashback Four: Hamilton-Burr Duel
• Within These Lines & Japanese Internment Camps
• Flashback Four: Titanic Mission
• Flashback Four: Lincoln Project
• The Diviners / The Great Gatsby & Roaring Twenties

Easy Homemade Beeswax Food Wrap

One way to cut down on waste and be a frugal mom is to make your own beeswax food wrap.  It can be used as a replacement for foil, plastic wrap, or sandwich bags...  

A few things you'll want to know...

• Just get it a little bit warm (hold it in your hands) and then shape it over what you are covering.  When it cools, it will hold that shape to create a seal.
• Don't put it in the microwave or dishwasher.  This will melt the wax, damaging your wrap and the items near it.
• Wash it by hand with soapy water.
• Don't use this to store raw meat.

Grab your list of ingredients (below) and prep your cloth.  Cut it into the size(s) that you want, using pinking shears to keep the edges from fraying.

You'll need:

• pinking shears 
• cloth (cotton remnants work well)
• paintbrush (throwaway or craft brush)
• tin foil
• wax paper
• rolling pin
• cookie sheet with lip
• wax pastilles   

• Cover the pan and lip with tin foil -- this will make clean up MUCH easier, plus it'll save your pans!
• Lay out your material and sprinkle beeswax on it.  
• In this photo, we're using the pastilles.  We also used some of the beeswax chunks from our own hives.  It will melt faster if you use smaller pieces, like these pastilles.
• Place in the oven - preheated to 250 - for about five minutes.  Be sure to peek in every so often.  When they begin to look like the cloth on the left, give it two more minutes.  Pull the pan from the oven, and use the paintbrush to smooth out any bigger pieces of wax still left.
• If you accidentally forget, and leave it in the oven for ten or fifteen minutes, it will completely melt the pastilles but may not smooth them out evenly. 
• Pull them off the tin foil and place in single layers on wax paper.  Use a rolling pin to flatten completely.  Allow to cool overnight.

It makes perfect sense, but it took my son to come up with this additional step to our process.  Just like you'd use something oil-based (like cooking spray) to keep your baked goods from sticking to the pan, we're using water spray to keep the oil-based beeswax from sticking!  This definitely made things move a little faster...  He came up with another great tip, too, that you can see at the end of the video!

In the video, you see the piece we've been using for the past five or six years.  Since we had just a little bit more beeswax than we needed, we went ahead and gave this one a second coat...so it should be good for another six years!

Not sure about making your own yet?  Try out pre-made Bees Wrap!

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Teaching Work Ethic

How many times have you thought to yourself "WHY do I have to do everything around here???" 

News flash : You don't. While we didn't create these little people to make them work, we can teach a lot of character and ethic through chores and working around the home, and it's just as crucial to their schooling.

Mom, you are the CEO of the home, and need to plan for your employees. Just like you wouldn't start a new job without knowing the work expectations, they can't work without knowing what is expected of them.

Let younger children work beside you. Yes, it's going to cause more hassle and a mess in the short term, but the pay out will be worth it! They will learn how you do something, and (if you'll answer a plethora of questions) why you do it that way. One of the best tools in my parent arsenal is explaining everything to my children. Why we something is just as important as how.

Walk your children through each chore three to four times, BE SPECIFIC about what you want done, and then turn them loose. We have a chore card for each room of the house, and the kids have been walked through each set of chores multiple times. If they need help with something (we're out of wet wipes; the vacuum is broken; etc), they know that they can ask for help. They may not ask for help just because they don't feel like doing it.

Setting Up a Chore System

• Printable Chore Cards
• Personalized Chore Cards
• Job Application for Kids
• Bedroom Checklist
• Zone Checklist
• Pocket Chart
• Laminator

Laminate the chore cards - they'll last longer. We keep these laminated cards in a pocket chart alongside our laminated school day cards, and chores are a natural extension of the school day in our homeschool.

Don't expect them to do it well at first, but expect to see some effort. Also, be sure to check behind your child and offer up a smile and positive words when they've done a good job. If the job needs work, provide constructive criticism, but remember that they did the best they could do and may just need more practice. (If you can tell they didn't try at all, this is a character issue...address accordingly.)

Give your children both paid and non-paid chores. This gives them a chance to work and save up for something they have been wanting. In our house, non-paid chores are everyday ones : feed the animals, clean your room, help clean the kitchen, fold laundry, etc. Paid chores are provided on an as-needed basis (ie, when I needed help collating 2,000 packets for a meeting). Occasionally, if they've been working very hard to earn something, typically a Lego set, and are very close to it, we will 'invent' a chore that needs doing, such as picking up sticks in the yard. They are doing the work, and feel proud of the accomplishment of purchasing their own Lego set.

When you teach your children to do chores, you're empowering them. They're learning life skills, and they're also learning about work ethics. They can do something. They are useful. They are needed. Even our special needs child knows that he has value and things that he is very good at - he has confidence! No matter what the future brings, they will know how to work hard at anything they put their mind toward. In our opinion, this is just as important, if not more so, than the academics of school.

Pick up the Spring Cleaning Checklists for FREE on our Subscriber Freebies page!  Not yet a subscriber?  Sign up here!

Snag a slew of resources in the Homeschool Helpers Bundle!

Covers ten topics to get your homeschool running smoothly!

 

Getting Started

· A Parent’s Alphabet

· Choosing the Right Curriculum for Your Family

· Motivating Your Teens

· Seven Steps to Teaching Work Ethic

 

Special Needs

· Occupational Therapy in Homeschool

· Speech Therapy in Homeschool

· Teaching the Distracted Child

 

Making it Fun

· Game-Schooling – Learning through Play

· How to Snag Free E-Books

· Holiday Foreign Language Fun

Looking for more?  Check out the original Mom’s Bundle and Homemaking & Homesteading Bundle!

Road Trip to San Francisco

Mom flew to San Francisco to run the Nike Women's Marathon (with Tiffany necklaces for finishers), while everyone else flew into northern California to visit family.....though they were nice enough to drive down, tour the city, and pick her up once the race was over.  While in San Francisco, we visited Fisherman's Wharf, Golden Gate Bridge park, and the Ghirardelli chocolate factory, amid other stops.

      

   

       

We headed back up to Sacramento to visit with the family some more, and spent the day at Old Sacramento, learning about California state history in the 19th century.  The kids were into Thomas the Tank Engine at this point, so we rode the train.  If you go, definitely spring for the First-Class treatment!!

    

          

One of the best things about the Nike Marathon was that it was girls' weekend out.  I had one of my best girls there exploring the city with me by foot.  She got up early and watched the race in the rain.  When hypothermia began to set in (I was not dressed for it to be so cold and rainy), she even weathered the cold to give me the sweatshirt off of her back!  You can't find better friends than that!

 

See these ugly old feet?  If I can run on them, day in and day out, then YOU can run, too!!!  Lace up and get outside.  And be happy that your feet are normal, and aren't capable of performing funky party tricks.....

Since this road trip, there was an accident that resulted in numerous surgeries and my owning my very own little scooter and handicapped parking pass.  I can no longer run, and some days can barely walk, but these memories continue to propel me forward.  The doctors cannot always predict the future, and I fully intend to prove them wrong.  

If there's anyone more stubborn than myself, I haven't met him or her yet.  If neuro-rewiring is a thing, I intend to make it happen.  Come back in a couple of years to see pictures from my next marathon!!

Check out our San Fran-themed unit studies!!!