The fall weather has been beautiful around these parts, so the kids and I decided it was time for a field trip. Where's our favorite place to go?....Silver Dollar City, of course. This just happens to be one of our favorite times of year to go too because it's the
National Harvest Festival and there are visiting craftsmen all over the park. We spent a full day there and didn't begin to see everything there is to see. But here's what we did do...
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| Of course we started the day at the bakery. |
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| Having a giant cinnamon roll first thing in the morning helps you keep up your strength. |
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We looked around quite a bit at the different demonstrating craftsmen and saw some amazing things.
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| This is our friend Dee's dad. He and his wife make sorghum at the park. |
SDC has a whole section of downloadable
lesson plans available on their website so we printed some and took them along on our outing. One of the things we did was interview the master craftsman at Carrie's Candles. Candlemaking is one thing that we enjoy doing so we were interested in learning how they do it at SDC and what candlemaking was like in the 1800's. We learned that candles back then were made out of animal fat called tallow and were made more out of necessity than for any other reason. (We had guessed that scented candles weren't a big thing back in the 1800's.) We dipped our own candles which is something I remember doing myself as a child when we visited SDC.
From there we headed over the Oak Trail Schoolhouse.
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| We sat at the desks and wrote on the slates. |
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| We learned how to make a 5-pointed star with a few folds and one snip of the scissors. | | | |
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We watched the big "Headin' West" production at the Opera House and spent some time at McHaffie's Homestead looking around and sitting on the front porch listening to the storyteller tell the true story of
Birdle Mannon. It was fascinating. Birdle lived in a 2-room cabin in the Ozarks from 1916 until she died in 1999. Her cabin was moved to SDC and now sits just behind the Homestead.
Well, perhaps the most exciting thing about the day was that the lines were short so everybody got to ride their favorite rollercoaster!
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| Ready for blast off! |
