Wax museums and golden calves

This week the 3rd Grader had a special event at school where everyone in her grade level participated in a wax museum. Each child had to read about a famous or significant person from history, make a trifold poster with highlights about that person, and present a one minute speech on his or her historical figure. As other students, teachers, and parents walked by the kids’ booths in the gym, they could step on a button and the student would present their one-minute speech as if their wax figure had come to life.

The 3rd Grader was assigned Laura Ingalls Wilder. My only exposure to Laura Ingalls was watching Little House on the Prairie when I was a child. I could tell you all about Ma and Pa, Laura, Mary, and Nellie Oleson. But, I didn’t know anything about the real Laura Ingalls. On this side of the project, though, we both know quite a bit about her. Interesting things like… she was married for sixty-four years, and she took her first plane ride at age eighty-seven.

I was tempted to print a huge picture of Michael Landon as the focal point for her poster. But since the 3rd Grader has no idea who he was she objected, and we printed the few pictures we could find of Mrs. Wilder herself instead.

It turns out Mrs. Wilder based the Little House series on her real life experiences growing up on the prairie. She really had a sister Mary who went blind, she really knew a mean girl like Nellie {don’t we all?!}, she really married an Almanzo, and many of the plot lines from the television series were based on actual events from her childhood and early adulthood. One major difference between reality and drama, though, was that Michael Landon bore little resemblance to the real Charles Ingalls.

image courtesy of mentalfloss.com

All in all, the 3rd Grader had a lot of fun doing this project. And, I don’t think she’ll forget what she learned about Mrs. Wilder anytime soon. Her only regret is that she chose a character who wore a prairie dress rather than something a little fancier. She prefers a boa to a bonnet any day.

In other educational news, the Preschooler has learned something I didn’t really pick up on until around middle school. And, that lesson is that when you’re at church and someone asks you a question, you can reply “God” or “Jesus,” and you will have about a seventy-five percent chance of being right every time. So generally, when we ask the Preschooler what she learned about at church each week, she just says, “God.”