Educational Adventures in Arizona

Discover Arizona's unique beauty, scenic diversity, and colorful history! We are a homeschool family that enjoys learning about Arizona’s history, geography, and environment while exploring every corner of the state together. We invite you to join us on our family’s adventures in Arizona, the Southwest, and beyond.

Monday, November 12, 2007

LIFE & TIMES OF LAURA INGALLS WILDER ~ November 10, 2007

This field trip combined lots of fun with learning about history, and it was a gorgeous day – neither too chilly nor too warm, but just right! About 20 kids (ages 4-12) and 14 parents showed up with the Desert Hills CHristian Homeschoolers group. Sharon Cullers, a homeschool mom, was our tour guide. She was assisted by her daughter and daughter-in-law.
First we went to visit the Bank and Sheriff’s Office. The sheriff locked up our lunches in the jail for safekeeping.

Then we got to sit inside the old church and take a group picture on the front steps, and after that we peeked into the teacherage.
Next door, we had “class” in the one-room schoolhouse.

The kids got to sit at the old school desks, while Mrs. Cullers taught us about the life and times of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author of the Little House on the Prairie book series.

At recess the kids played old-fashioned games – they rolled hoops around, played tug of war, and jumped rope. My son Jon exclaimed, “Wow, who knew that these old games could be so much fun!”

We got to watch a gun fight and pose for a picture with the gunfighters after the show.

After that, we ate a picnic lunch on the village green and learned how to do the Virginia Reel.

Then we went to the blacksmith shop, where the blacksmith showed us how they used to make tools, horseshoes, and nails.
We looked at the Exhibit Hall, and from there we walked over to a large log cabin from the1880's. This is where we made butter, candles, and rope.
Even though we were at Pioneer Village the whole day long (8:30 am to 4:30 pm), the time sure went fast! One girl said “This was the best day of my life!”

Here is an article that I wrote several years ago about Laura Ingalls Wilder: www.knowledgehouse.info/njfklaura.html . It has a recipe for making homemade butter, similar to what we made at the place. Yum! This was the third time that our family has done this field trip and we always enjoy it!

Did You Know…? Whenever school attendance was impossible because of distance or weather, Laura was taught by her mother at home. Later, Laura homeschooled her own daughter Rose.

“I believe it would be much better for everyone if children were given their start in education at home. No one understands a child as well as his mother, and children are so different that they need individual training and study. A teacher with a room full of pupils cannot do this. At home, too, they are in their mother’s care. She can keep them from learning immoral things from other children.” ~Laura Ingalls Wilder

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Monday, May 14, 2007

VALENTINE, AZ ~ May 13, 2007

The old town of Valentine is located about four miles beyond Hackberry, in scenic Truxton Canyon where Route 66 and the Santa Fe railroad tracks run side by side. The town was named in 1910 in honor of Robert G. Valentine, Commissioner of Indian Affairs from 1908-1910. The large brick Indian School that had been established there for the Hualapai children in 1900 is now closed but the site is still the headquarters for the Truxton Canyon Agency of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

A couple of miles down the road, there is a little red one-room schoolhouse that was used by the town’s white children. The corner entrance looks like it had been remodeled at one time. If you walk up the steps and peek in the front door, you can see that most of the wooden floor boards have rotted away leaving wide gaps where you can peer down into the basement. At the rear entrance there is a set of steps that leads downstairs, and what looks like a coat closet. Most of the old tin ceiling tiles remain intact. Two outhouses (perhaps boys and girls?) stand on one side of the schoolyard, still with their wooden seat. However, nothing remains of the Valentine post office, grocery store, or gas station.

A few more miles down the road from Truxton Canyon is the actual town of Truxton. Edward Beale’s famous camel expedition stopped at the spring here in 1857. Lieutenant Beale (1822-1893) must have named the town for his one-year-old son Truxton (1856-1936), his older brother Truxton (1820-1870), and/or his mother, Emily Truxton Beale (1832-1880). In the 1950’s, Truxton was the site of a busy Route 66 gas station and café.

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Saturday, October 21, 2006

Indian School Park ~ October 21, 2006


Art class, Phoenix Indian School, Arizona. Photographed by Messinger, June 1900.
American Indian Select List number 161.
Courtesy of The National Archives, http://www.archives.gov/

While we were in the area, I had been wanting to drive past the Phoenix Indian School and see it again, but it wasn’t the way I remembered it. I expected to see a big old building right next to the street, but instead it’s a large grassy park with a few smaller buildings set back from the road.

Maybe I’m thinking of something else, or maybe the building I’m thinking of was torn down. Because they say that the rubble wall of the waterfall (behind the ampitheater) is recycled from an old Phoenix Indian School building. The architect also saved the WPA (Works Progress Administration) stamps from the original sidewalks and incorporated these into rubble walls throughout the park.

Today the complex is called Steele Indian School Park, and it’s one of the biggest parks in Phoenix. A wide circular walkway called “The Circle of Life” is at the heart of the park. In the center is a concrete water cistern on which is etched a poem that explains the American Indian design theme of the park. The Arbor Bridge and Entry Garden features a spiraling walkway that winds its way past native desert plants. There are columns with plaques on them and descriptive texts about the history of the school. The park also has a green area with grass and trees, an amphitheater, lake, dog area, and neighborhood playground.


I don’t know why they would demolish some historic buildings and choose to save others, but three of the old buildings remain:

Memorial Hall – This auditorium was built in 1922 to honor the students who fought in WWI, and it will be restored as an auditorium.

Band Building – Built in 1933, this building started out as the elementary school and later became the band building. It will be remodeled into Museum/Administrative Offices.

Dining Hall – Built in 1901, the dining hall will become a Native American Cultural Center and Museum.

Founded in 1891, the United States Industrial Indian School at Phoenix, later known as the Phoenix Indian School, was a coeducational, federal boarding school. Native American Indian children were brought from the reservations to be educated and assimilated into the white man's culture.


The campus had fourteen brick and twenty frame buildings which included a large schoolhouse, a two-story building containing employee quarters and a student dining hall, a shop for vocational training, several dormitories, a bathhouse, boiler house, water and sewer system. There were acres of fields where they grew hay, turnips, cabbages, tomatoes, and melons. They also had horses, mules, cattle, pigs, ducks, turkeys, and chickens. These provided for the vocational education of the students and also contributed to the school’s self-sufficiency.

An act of Congress, signed by President Ronald Reagan in November 1988, was to close the Phoenix Indian School and pass its administration from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the National Park Service. Nineteen students, the last graduating class, walked up to the stage inside Memorial Hall and received their diplomas on May 24, 1990.

Websites

http://phoenix.gov/PARKS/sisp.html (Steele Indian School Park.)
http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/phoenix/ (Archaeology of the Phoenix Indian School.)


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Saturday, August 19, 2006

Mogollon Rim ~ August 19, 2006

We were hoping to pick some raspberries up on the Mogollon Rim today but there were only three left on one bush. I guess we should have gone the week before, but it's hard to time it just right. Even without raspberries, the trip was well worth it because we saw a whole herd of deer - probably about a dozen - the most I've seen at one time. After that we saw a flock of wild turkeys! None of us had never seen real wild turkeys before. It was so neat to see them walking around in the woods. I wonder if they're what ate all of the raspberries! Also, on the way up there we stopped at the old Strawberry Schoolhouse and it was open so we got to go in and take some pictures. (Each of the following photos will open in a new window.)

Strawberry Schoolhouse
Sneaking An Apple
He's In Trouble Now!
Dunce
Ferns
Deer In The Forest
Jumping Off A Log
Two Kids With Sticks
Mogollon Rim View 1
Mogollon Rim View 2

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