Pioneer School Experience

We recently packed up our lunch baskets, donned our pioneers duds, and traveled back in time to a school day in 1901 at the Harbor History Museum's Midway Schoolhouse. What a day!

We practiced our handwriting, practiced our sums, read from McGuffey's Readers and learned the "Five Finger" lesson of truthfulness, honesty, punctuality, cleanliness, and kindness.

Overall, though, we prefer school nowadays - though we noticed many of the subjects we learned about were the same, many of the Pioneers noted that there was no science taught in 1901. We especially did not like all having to do the same thing at the same speed - that felt "hard." The Pioneers feel like they get a better education today -- and, true to Seabury style, we definitely prefer learning at our own pace!

Tall Tales: Super-Hamster vs. Nefarious Guinea Pig

As a class, we recently wrote a Tall Tale about our class pet, Rosie the Roborovski Dwarf hamster, and her misadventures with the 5th grade class guinea pig, Ginger. 

Then we spent an art session with Ms. Head learning how to draw rodents in order to illustrate our tale. Here is our story and some of our sketches.

The Adventures of Rosie the Super-Hamster

By the Pioneers

Once upon a time, in a very big classroom, lived a very small hamster named Rosie. She was a Robo-Dwarf hamster, the smallest and fastest kind of hamster. Rosie was not just fast, though, she was  so fast she could make a tornado if she ran in a circle. She was also so strong she could lift anything, even a shelf filled with books. She had super-strong teeth and could bite through metal like it was soft cheese. 

Rosie was the class pet of the Pioneers, a 2nd and 3rd grade class at Seabury School. She lived in a wonderful cage full of special furniture made just for her by the students in the class. She had a small ramp made from popsicle sticks that she played on a like a slide. To the kids in the class, she appeared to be a normal hamster. She hid her super-hamster powers from her owners. When she was alone on the weekends, she would run off the slide and fly for 10 seconds across the width of her cage.

One long weekend, the class had left Rosie with plenty of extra food, as they did every time she would be alone for a while. Rosie looked forward to the long hours of quiet and solitude. She loved the students, and loved rolling around the room in her hamster ball, but it was tiring to hide her super powers day after day. On Saturday, while she was flying off her slide, she accidentally hit her food bowl and knocked it over. She watched sadly, trying not to cry, as the food spilled over the edge of the bookcase on which her cage rested. She looked forlornly down at the spilled food on the floor.

Then, to her horror, into the room came a big, ugly, fluffy orange guinea pig. It was Ginger, Rosie’s arch nemesis from the 5th grade classroom next door. Ginger slowly waddled over, grabbed the food, stuffed her mouth full and carried it all away. Rosie was furious! Fire sparked from her eyes and smoke was streaming from her ears! She yelled “Stop right there, Ginger! That is MY food!” Ginger said in an evil, scratchy voice “I shall NEVER leave this food for you! I am hungry and I am bigger than you!” Ginger then crawled away back to the 5th grade classroom.

Rosie was sad. Then she was mad. Then she was exploding with anger! She imagined that the bars of her cage were made of sunflower seeds (her favorite!) and she started to chew them. “Crunch, Crinch, Crunch, Crinch” went her teeth.  After a minute, she bit through her cage and chased after Ginger. She flew to the kitchen, which was between the two classrooms, like an airplane. Her fur became a blur. She crashed through the door into the 5th grade room. Ginger quickly ran to the plastic pool that served as her cage and tried to hide. Rosie ran in circles at a thousand miles an hour.  It created a noise like a thousand bees buzzing. Rosie ran so fast that she created a big twisted cone of air like a tornado. Ginger got sucked into the tornado and the food went flying everywhere. It looked like a big twister with a big orange blob circling around like a missile tracking an enemy plane.  She was flung back to her cage, hit the wall, and hit so hard she left a guinea pig print in the side. 

Then Rosie peeled her off the wall, took the food and flung it back into her food bowl all the way across the other room. She ran back to her classroom just before sunrise. As the kids walked in one by one the next morning, they looked in Rosie’s cage and saw a big hole. They looked in the kitchen and saw the broken door to the 5th grade room. The 5th graders saw a big guinea pig shape in the side of the pool, but Ginger was just lying on the ground in her hay like a flat pancake, the way she usually did. 

The kids in Rosie’s class pooled their money to buy her a new cage. They wondered why there was a hole in the cage. They were very suspicious, but they would never know what had actually happened that weekend. The 5th graders also wondered what had made the big dent in the side of Ginger’s pool. They were also suspicious, but they would never know what happened either. Both classes made sure the door to the kitchen was closed every night after that.

Ginger does not really look nefarious, does she?

What's the Temperature?

Our first step in the study of Meteorology: Make a thermometer to help understand how they work! Here's a few pics of the Pioneers constructing an alcohol thermometer. We'll be making several instruments to put together our own weather station and we will be monitoring the weather for the next several months. Keep tuning in to see what experiments we come up with and what we learn about the weather and how it TRANSITIONS.

 First, mix equal parts water and rubbing alcohol.

 Then, pour them into a bottle.

 Add food coloring.

 Afix a straw in the bottle, using clay to keep it from touching the bottom.

Finally, heat up the air inside with your hands to see what happens!

Bringing Revolutionary Times to Life

We were very lucky to have Lt. Col. (Retired) Bob O'Neal from the Sons of the American Revolution come visit us recently to show us what life was like during revolutionary times. He came dressed as a minuteman and showed us many artifacts soldiers would have used during the Revolutionary War. He also talked about the many different flags that flew over different battles and showed us how to cut a 5-pointed star. Here's what the Pioneers had to say about his visit:

"I liked when we got to pass around the items." -R.L.
"I learned that lanterns were made of tin. I also liked the cow horn cup!" J.G.
"I liked the one-cut star. I also learned that they had to scrape the tea off [of a hardened cake of tea]." C.S.
"I liked the horn cup. It smelled bad but it was cool." -J.C.
'I liked a lot. I learned a lot." J.F.
"I liked it when you made the one-cut star. I learned that Colonial times were hard to live in." -K.F.