I'm about a month late doing this post, but I wanted to record what a fun FHE (Family Home Evening) night we had for Pioneer day. Both Blake and I have ancestors that were Mormon Pioneers (read more at
wikipedia; lds.org used to have a great website about the pioneer trail but I can't find it anymore...). In fact, Anson is named after one of these ancestors - it's a good naming story I'll tell another time. We know the names of our ancestors, but not many stories about them. We decided we could use at least one FHE night around Pioneer Day on July 24th to talk about the faith and sacrifices of the early pioneers. Hopefully we can find more stories as a family and our children will be familiar with our history.
Realizing our kids are still young we kept it very basic. We sang Primary songs about pioneers, looked at LDS art of pioneers, and "made" our own handcart out of card board. We told Claire what the pioneers took with them, but that they could only take what they could carry. Claire went to her room to get a few changes of clothes, favorite toys, pretend food & utensils from her play food collection, and a blanket.
Then we sang "
The Handcart Song" and "
Pioneer Children Sang As They Walked" while walking up and down the hallway.
When we started singing about washing at streams Claire told us we needed a stream. We set that up and every time she crossed over she stopped to pretend to wash clothes & dishes in it.
The girl LOVES to pretend. She had a blast. All week long she kept asking to play pioneer again. Thanks to Blake for keeping that cardboard thing held together long enough to have a nice night. Thanks to Grammy for walking Anson back and forth - I think he had fun, too. :)
