To go along with our Native American studies we visited the Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center. This was our first time exploring this museum.

I was surprised at the variety of exhibits. We were there for the Indian artifacts, but also learned about the natural history, transportation, & community of the Columbia Gorge.

FIRST PEOPLES – THE CASCADE CHINOOK

We began our tour in the section of the museum that housed the items we came to see, The Native American exhibit.

Left: Standing tall & proud in the middle of the exhibit is a replica of  Tsagaglalal: She Who Watches. She is probably the most recognizable petroglyph in our area.

Top Right: Carved totems or sticks & Shaman’s spangle or shield.

Bottom Right: Canoe anchor & net sinker

Top Left: Knife – Stone blade attached by pitch to antler handle.
Not long before we visited the museum, Farm Kid1 asked me how the Indians made knives. I had to tell him I didn’t know, but probably out of bones or stones. I was happy to see this example & an explanation of what it was made from.

Top Right: Gaming stone – rolled or kicked by teams in the “kick” game.
Holy cow, that must have hurt when you kicked it.

Bottom: Root gathering or storage bags.

Left: Ceremonial dress made from buckskin with bead & shell embellishments

Emory Strong Library
Emory Strong spent more than 40 years researching the early people of the Columbia River Basin. After his death, his family donated his collection to the museum. Walking in the library is only available by appointment, but we could see all the memorabilia & artifacts through the glass.

TURNING POINT & THE CORPS OF DISCOVERY

With Lewis & Clark exploring the area in the early 1800’s, change was certainly coming. Between 1850 and 1853 land speculators & settlers filed claims under the Donation Land Act along the north bank of the Columbia River.

Top Left: Council Fire on the Columbia by David Manuel
A bronze sculpture with Native Americans & members of the Corp of Discovery. There was a small sign encouraging us to find a few items in the sculpture like a quill pen, fishing net, & blue trade beads. I love things like that. I guarantee my kids would have took a quick glance at the sculpture and moved on. Instead, they examined the sculpture searching for the items.

Bottom Left: Model of the Clahclehlah village
Lewis & Clark visited this site in 1805 & 1806. It was excavated from 1977 -1979 during the construction of a powerhouse at Bonneville Dam. Many artifacts were found.

Right: Items typically traded by the people of Clahclehlah in the early 1800’s, such as wapato roots, salmon tails, hazelnuts, tobacco, wool blankets & dentalium shells.

EARLY CHANGES

This area focused on the pioneers moving to the area & the military forts needed to protect them from Native Americans.

1907 dry goods store front
The real Doumitt Store closed in 1957.

The store windows displayed items available at the store. I love the items from this time period.

TRANSPORTATION

A small area is dedicated to sternwheelers & the SP & S (Spokane, Portland & Seattle) Railroad. I’ll admit we didn’t spend a lot of time in this area, although I do find the changes in transportation interesting. The sternwheelers were basically put out of business once the railroad came through. I’m curious to see what, if anything, makes automobiles obsolete.

Bailey Gatzert pilot wheel
The Bailey Gatzert was a sternwheeler built in 1890. She ran up and down the Columbia River & also around Puget Sound until the 1920’s.

HARVESTING RESOURCES

A large, open area showcases the timber & fishing industries.

Top Left: Logging equipment

Top Right: 1930 Caterpillar Tractor

Bottom: 1921 Mack Log truck. Max speed is 17.2 mph

Top Left: Typical airplane to deliver air male, a 1917 Curtiss JN-4 or “Jenny” bi-plane.

Bottom Left: The Corliss Engine, a giant saw mill steam engine weighing 32 tons. This thing was huge. It was made in 1895 & provided energy to a sawmill until 1949.

Right: McCord Fishwheel Replica
I asked Farm Kid2 what he thought this huge contraption was used for. He said he thought it had something to do with catching fish. I thought he was crazy, but it turns out that he was right. The wheels were placed in the Columbia River scooping up fish & dumping them into boxes. They were very effective. By 1935 they were banned in both Oregon & Washington.

HARSH DEMANDS – BONNEVILLE DAM

It is a small section of the museum, but I found the effects of Bonneville Dam & our need for its hydro-electric power very interesting.

COMMUNITY GALLERY

Inside & around the “house” are items about the people in the community.

Left: An old scrapbook. I’m so tempted to make one of these oldies, but goodies, for my kids. It’s a much better way than an old box to hold their memorabilia.

Right: Canteen cup with WWII battle locations inscribed

JAPANESE COLLECTION

An added bonus at the museum was their Japanese collection. We had just finished studying Japan, so it was great timing to view items from that culture.

Since Japan is right across the Pacific Ocean many Japanese immigrants came to the Pacific NW in the early 1900’s. They helped build roads, railroads, & tunnels, they planted orchards & operated ranches.
Top: Kazeon-bosatsu (Goddess of Mercy)
c. 1600
The gold ball in her hand represents happiness, joy & good health

Top: Wedding kimono

Bottom Left: “Beautiful Woman Just from Bath” by Kitagawa Utamaro
wood block print. copy of 1797 original
When we went to the Portland Art Museum I was hoping to see a wood block print, which we didn’t. So, I was glad to see one here.

ROSARY COLLECTION

I am not Catholic, but this was amazing. The Don Brown Rosary Collection displays about 4000 rosaries.

OUTDOOR EXHIBITS

Court of the Cedars
Carved in 1980 by Dudley Carter at 90 years old.
Right: Primitive Woman

Top: Early logging & road building equipment
If you are someone who really likes machinery, this museum had lots of machines to admire.

Bottom: 1959 SP & S diesel locomotive
Supposedly there is a geocache hidden on that train engine, but we didn’t find it. Dang it!

I am definitely glad we went to this museum. We learned so much about the Native people & the many changes over the years in an area not far from our home.

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As part of our Westward Movement Unit, we worked on Evan-Moor’s Moving West History Pockets. I was impressed with the variety explored in this book.

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I created the books using paper grocery bags & yarn. The front cover is about 12″ x 12″. The inside pockets were cut to about 12″ x 16″. The 16″ side is folded up from the bottom 4″ and stapled to create the pocket. After each pocket was made, I hole punched them & tied them together with yarn we dyed.

There were a number of maps from the Scholastic book, Interactive 3-D Maps: American History, that we added to our pockets.

Moving West Intro Pocket
Each pocket came with great historical information, a writing project & a craft.

Exploring the Wilderness Pocket
We spent quite a bit of time on this pocket – mostly because it included Lewis & Clark. We went on two field trips to learn more about these famous fellows and the Corps of Discovery. We went to the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center in Washington and to Fort Clatsop in Oregon.

The boys each made a map from Scholastic’s 3-D map book.

We learned about the Westward Journey Nickel series from the US mint. We made rubbings of the front & back of each nickel… although, they didn’t turn out quite as well as I hoped.

We also rubbed a golden Sacajawea dollar. Years ago I worked in downtown Portland & would take the MAX to work, which is our light rail system. If you were due change after paying for your ticket, dollars were issued to you in the Sacajawea coin. I always thought that was cool.

I bought the Lewis and Clark Expedition Coloring Book at a trinket shop at the beach. The kids each colored a few pages and added them to their pocket.

Our favorite books to go along with this unit were Seaman’s Journal, the expedition told through the dog’s eyes, and American Slave, American Hero, the story of William Clark’s slave York.

The Gold Rush Pocket
On our road trip, we stopped at Columbia State Historic Park and explored a “real” mining town. It is in California, right off Highway 49. It was a great field trip to go with this pocket.

Oregon Trail Pocket
The Oregon Trail pocket got a little extra attention. It is kind of a big deal around here, since we are near the end. We even visited the End of the Oregon Trail historical site.

Native American Struggles Pocket
We learned about how the Native Americans used the land and how white man basically took it all away from them.

We added a Trail of Tears map from the Scholastic book.

And, 5 More Pockets
We worked on 5 other pockets, as well, including Homesteading the Great Plains (which I loved mainly due to Laura Ingalls Wilder) & Building the Railroads.

I enjoyed this unit a lot. The activities from the History Pockets book were great, and made even better with our additions. We made a Covered Wagon Craft that I have always wanted to do. I could have expanded on this subject all year. But, we had other things to learn…

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Back when I was home schooling, as part of our Farmer Boy unit, we made candles. In the book Almanzo talks about taking his lantern out to do chores and walk to his room at night. We discussed how they didn’t have electricity for lighting and instead used candles. We talked about how their method to make candles was different than how we were making candles. I think Farm Kid1 got the idea & I hope this makes the book a bit more relatable.

SUPPLIES

The supplies are fairly simple. The necessities are wax, wick & a mold. We used a waxy coated dixie cup as our mold. Our extra goodies were crayons for color & liquid apple scent.

MELTING WAX

Next, fill a pot with a couple inches of water & set it over a high stove top setting. Once boiling, turn the heat down a bit. Place a bar of wax & crayon pieces in a tin can & place the can in the hot water to melt the wax. The crayons melted quicker than the bar of wax.

THE MOLD

Start by cutting a length of wick about 3″ taller than your mold. Tape one end of the wick to the bottom of your mold & wrap the other end around a pencil. I found that we needed to tape the wick to the pencil or it wanted to unwind. I also cut notches out of the dixie cup to hold the pencil.

Using a pot holder, pour the melted hot wax into your mold.

Now wait for the wax to harden. Our one box of wax made 8 little candles.

FINISHING THE CANDLE

After the wax is hard, peel off the mold and voila a candle. I love how most of the crayon wax settled toward the bottom of the candle giving it a gradient appearance.

Trim the wick to about half an inch.

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Is it silly that I’ve always wanted to do a covered wagon project? Well, silly or not, I finally had a good excuse to have the boys make their own covered wagons. We were studying the days of the pioneers. We just had to make a covered wagon to go along with that era… And to tell the truth, I was hoping to make an entire old west town out of cardboard. But, we ran out of time & now it’s time to move on to other subjects. Hopefully we can still make the old west town one day.

THE WAGONS

Farm Kid2 chose to add oxen. Love that.

The base of the wagon was a small cardboard box. They covered the box with strips of brown construction paper to resemble wood.

This is not a fancy craft. The hoops holding up the canvas are pieces of wire shoved between layers of the cardboard. As I’ve mentioned before, awhile ago we dyed paper, yarn & fabric. They used scraps of that fabric as the canvas on their covered wagon, which is why their canvas is tinted purple. We used the dyed yarn to tie the canvas to the covered wagon.

The axles & wheels are tinker toys & cardboard.

They were given cardboard scraps & paper to add details to their wagon, such as people & their seats.

I love how they added kids looking out the back like you see in pictures.

I’m really happy with how these turned out & the effort the kids put into making them. They seemed to have a great time with this project.

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Since we are learning about the Oregon Trail, I thought it would be fun to check out The End of the Oregon Trail in Oregon City. Historically, this is an important spot. Pioneers traveling along the Oregon Trail ended their journey here – well kind of. Back in the days of the Oregon Trail the whole area would be full of covered wagons. From here travelers spread out finding their perfect home throughout the Willamette Valley.

This official End of the Oregon Trail has an Interpretive Center, Visitor Center & Heritage Garden. The garden is tended by Master Gardeners and has many of the plants pioneers grew.

VISITOR CENTER

We spent awhile exploring the Visitor Center playing old games & trying on pioneer clothes.

Top: Merchant’s counter that was used in the 1860’s

Bottom Left: This was the first time I had heard about button dolls. They’re practical. The arms & legs are made of buttons, so when you lost a button along the trail you took a button from a little girl’s button doll.

Middle Right: This was a game called Three Men’s Morris, an early version of tic tac toe.

INTERPRETIVE CENTER

The Interpretive Center was closed when we visited, which was a bummer. But, I peeked through a window and it seemed to have typical items found along the Oregon Trail. We’ll have to go back another day to check it out.

CEDAR PLANK BUILDINGS

Near the garden were buildings built from cedar planks.

HERITAGE GARDEN

The garden was small, but had many interesting plants.

I do have this one suggestion. Don’t plant sunflowers right in front of your sign. I gently pulled the sunflowers back to read the sign.

Left: Bloody Butcher Corn

Top Right: There were little signs like this around the garden describing plants.

Bottom Right: The squash is Boston Marrow.

Top Left: Kent Golding Hops

Bottom Right: Scarlet Runner Beans

Top Left: Purple Mountain Orach. I’ve never seen this. The plant is tall & kinda leggy, but I loved the burgundy flowers.

Bottom Left: My fun loving, but maybe slightly odd, son was collecting seeds from the ground to add to his garden. When we got home he was even nice enough to share some with me. He collects seeds at home, too. So, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that he would do it here. They did have small seed packets to purchase in the visitor center. When I went they had 4 different types of seeds – 2 veggies & 2 flowers. I bought 5 packets and am seriously thinking about sending the master gardeners an email to see if they will send me more varieties. I’d love to have good heritage plants to add to my gardens.

We’ll have to go back when the Interpretive Center is open & also check out the garden again.

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At the beginning of the school year, Farm Kid1 read Farmer Boy & did a few activities relating to the book, including making this lapbook.

The Lapbook

Left: Farm Kid1 read from the Farmer Boy book my mom gave me when I was a kid.
Right: I scanned the cover & used the print out for the front of the lapbook.

On the left & right pages are photos of our hands on activities: popcorn in milk experiment, baking bread & making candles.
The middle section shows the Wilder farm & where New York is located.

On the left is a character sketch of Almanzo & on the right is a blueprint of the Wilder Farm. These two ideas came from Homeschool Share. They have a pretty good Farmer Boy unit worth checking out.

We were also studying animal classification at the time. So, Farm Kid1 filled out a worksheet classifying the animals on the Wilder Farm. The coloring sheet came from the Cheryl Harness website.

This was the first lapbook Farm Kid1 completed for school. He loved it – as did I.

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We started reading Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder this week. The pioneer days are my favorite time in history & I am a huge Little House fan. So, this is going to be a fun unit for me to explore with Farm Kid1

I’ve got a few pioneer activities & crafts planned. But we came across a surprise experiment to try while reading Chapter 3. It says: “You can fill a glass full to the brim with milk, and fill another glass of the same size brim full of popcorn, and then you can put all the popcorn kernel by kernel into the milk, and the milk will not run over. You cannot do this with bread. Popcorn and milk are the only two things that will go into the same place.” I don’t remember learning this little tid bit when I read this book as a kid, but I was sure excited to read it now as an adult. The next day we tried it. And, by golly, it worked.

Our glasses full to the brim with milk and popcorn.

Kernel by kernel, Farm Kid1 placed the popcorn into the milk.

Yep, all that popcorn fit into the glass of milk & not a drip of milk slipped out.

We had an old zucchini from the garden that we were going to feed to the chickens. I cut it up & we added it to a glass of milk to see what would happen. The milk overflowed.

Well, that was fun. Now we have to figure out why it works.

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