Fur Trade and Blankets

This week's first field trip was to MLHS for Arn Kind's talk on the Fur Trade.  He dressed as a voyageur and spoke in a French accent for the whole two hour spiel!  My kids thought it was his real accent.  He taught them to count to three in French.  He also dressed up a kid from a different school as a voyageur and explained why voyageurs wear the things they wear.  Belts- to look good and prevent hernias, belts just under the knees- to look good and provide extra strength when lifting the 90lb bundles.  Each guy would carry two or more of the 90lb bundles at a time!  Each guy was in charge of six.  The canoes were about 35-40ft long and could carry up to 8,000lbs.  And they were very tippy, but none of the voyageurs could swim! They were hired that way so they would take extra care in not tipping the canoe!  He also had audience participants bartering, one "Native American" to trade furs to the "voyageur" for trade goods.  He actually had goods for them to exchange so we could see what it was really like.  And the last thing he did was have 14 audience members come down to be voyageurs in the canoe.  One person pushed them away from rocks, one person was the steerer in the back, and the rest paddled.  Oh, and one guy was the singer to keep them paddling in rhythm.  They sang in French (he had a CD of the song).  My 6th graders thought it was better this year than last year (last year was on the Civil War). 


One of my 6th graders threw up not ten minutes into the presentation.  No one was sitting in front of him, which was good, because it spewed a good two rows in front of him.  Poor guy.  His parents work in Redwood Falls, so the presentation was over by the time someone came to pick him up.  And he threw up three more times in the bathroom.  Yeah, not fun.  One of the MLHS people cleaned up the mess, so neither Mr. E nor I had to do it.  We contemplated driving him back partway so he could get home sooner, but there wouldn't be enough drivers for the other kids if one of us left.  So he just had to wait. 


After all that, we went to Fairmont for lunch at Pizza Ranch.  More drama.  A bunch of kids only brought $10 for lunch, but lunch was $9.55 plus tax, bringing the total to $10.21, so a bunch were short 21 cents.  Some kids who brought extra loaned their friends some; others, I just covered their odd cents.  So we all got to eat lunch.  Except another kid who had a headache and said he didn't feel well.  His friends tried to get him to eat pizza, but I said that was a no go if he hadn't paid, plus pizza isn't good for sick people.  Another chaperone gave him some Sprite and not long afterwards this kid was in the game room yelling his head off with his friends.  But later he said he still had a headache.  No wonder!


We got back to school in time to do American History and have recess.  Then it was the end of the day!  Mrs. B, Angie, Miss N, and I went fabric shopping for Project Linus blankets.  There is a mega-sale on fleece until tomorrow, so we spent all the money we had saved for fabrics.  We ended up with fabric for about 30 blankets or so and saved over $1000 on the fabric we bought!!!  Plenty of blankets for the students to make during NLSW in March.