No School Day 12

No school day 12

 

It's Saturday, but there is no school and yesterday we were all tired from the field trip so we didn't do as much work as usual.

 

Social studies/History- Watched an episode of Little House on the Prairie where Charles Ingalls doesn’t get paid for 2 months work he did and then mill where he works gets shut down. Sounds kind of like now. Problem was he was in debt at the Olsen’s Merchantile so when he didn’t get paid they were in a bad situation. Their whole family pulled together, did without “luxuries” like sugar and worked to earn money and do all the work at home while Charles did hard manual labor digging ditches and cleaning horse stalls. After mean Nellie Olsen teased Laura about her dad smelling bad Charles had a great saying. “Never look down on someone for working hard. The only people who think hard work stinks are people who are walking around with their noses in the air. Never be ashamed of working hard.”

 

After the show we had a great discussion with the kids about debt and working hard and doing what is necessary in life, even when it’s not the job you planned on or the way things were supposed to be. You just pull together and do whatever is necessary to make it work. Don’t just sit down and give up. 

 

Work hard and sometimes think outside the box.

 

We decided to use what we learned and put it into practice.

Since Charles Ingalls dug ditches by hand we decided to fix our driveway problem by hand.

Civil Engineering- Mud problem in the driveway is back, again. a couple of years ago we had a 200 tons of gravel put down to make the road, but this one spot became a problem again after we had more rock delivered. Seems as though the weight of the loaded dump trucks was just too much for the soft ground. The gravel/road base was sucked into the ground and we have mud again. Solution, more rock. Good thing we have a few tons laying around waiting to get the gravel pad completed. So much rain this winter it's going to have to wait to get done when it drys out. With the way it keeps raining lately, it's going to be August.

 

PE- family work project, moving some of the big rock on the edges of where the yet to be finished gravel pad is supposed to be over to the mud slick in the driveway. We made fast work of it, Carissa turned it into a race. Hopefully the bigger rock will not get sucked into the mud as fast as the road base did.

 

Great to pull together as a family and get some hard labor done!

Ended up pretty well. Hopefully it will solve our mud problem for awhile.

 

PE2- after the rock work was done Carissa rode her horse around. She still has to struggle getting on bareback so once she is on she never wants to get off. Had some creative positions trying to get the gate closed. Always thankful for the patience of kid horses!