Portage

Today the girls and I took a field trip to Portage, the city built around the 1.4 mile land-hike between the Fox River and the Wisconsin River.

We began our day with a stop at the Mackenzie Center, a nature education center adminstered by the DNR. What a gem! I had never been here, but the girls and I loved it!


As we walked in, Daisy , looking up through the forested area asked, "How do you know if a maple tree is a Sugar Maple?"

Ever quick on my feet, I answered, "Why, you just look at its nametag, of course!"
The girls were very intrigued by the rocks from which the welcome center was built. They all came from local fields and were the diverse rocks I grew up with--granite, basalt, sandstone, schist. Around here, all they know is the yellow flint-type rock we have. How did all these rocks come to the local fields, you ask? Why, the glaciers thoughtfully brought them!

Next up was the wildlife exhibits. And unexpected perk of this field trip (we hadn't planned on stopping here, really) was to see all the wildlife that once roamed an unsettled Wisconsin.

There were bison and deer.

Wolves.

Coyotes (not pictured) and cougars.

Yay! A turkey vulture!

Owls, hawks and an eagle. See the eagle's nest? It's huge!

The most social badger we've ever seen.

There was also a bobcat, fisher, porcupine, raccoon, gray and red foxes, a skunk, a possum. At each display was a little plaque with an imprint of the animal's footprint. The girls were delighted by these and checked out each one.
All of the animals were either injured or captive-born and are unable to survive in the wild. While it looks like conditions are not optimal (small cage settings with cement floors), the cages were clean and all the animals looked healthy.

One of the wardens actually showed up to do some cleaning while we were there and answered a bunch of questions for us. I was curious to know how long the animals lived there and surprisingly, many of them had outlived their in-the-wild lifespan at this center already. Overall, the place was well-done.

In another area of the center, there was a real 120 year old log cabin being used to house a logging display. There was a display of the maple syrup process and a huge ancient log (almost 300 years old from the time it was a seedling!)

The girls found this rebar wigwam. It was messy, so immediately they set out to sweep it clean with branches they found.

Our next stop was in Portage at the Surgeon's Quarters, the only remaining building of Fort Winnebago. It's located at the exit point of the Fox River at the portage. Marquette and Joliet were here.

It's a nice little tour, filled with amazingly old and wonderful things. My favorite was a beautiful sampler in PRISTINE condition made by a 12 yo girl in 1802!

We also visited the Indian Agent house where we had a nice, private tour by a nice homeschooling mom (she was the docent of the day). My favorite thing about this place (we were here with Rose Bud when she studied WI history) is the 200 year old elm tree in front of the house. When we arrived, the tree doctor was just delivering the estimate for the tree's triennial (is that the word? Every three years) IV treatment to prevent Dutch Elm disease. The tree's 2 siblings have already died from it, but this one remains spectacular and healthy! Here is a nice pdf telling the story of the Kinzies, the Indian Agent house (scroll down) and the Elms.

A nice bit of Wisconsin history can be found in the book Wau-bun, written by Juliette Kinzie in 1832 of her life at Fort Winnebago and as the wife of the Indian agent at Portage. It is considered the earliest written history of this part of Wisconsin.

Being a Pioneer in Wisconsin

We're moving into the time in Wisconsin where there is much more to read. We've crossed the 1800 threshold and we're reading about pioneer families. There are so many wonderful stories that take place in Wisconsin.



Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder Everyone knows Laura, right? Well, she lived in the town of Pepin, WI around 1875.



First Farm in the Valley (and sequels) by Anne Pellowski This is a WONDERFUL series, based on the author's own family who were of Polish descent and lived near Dodge, WI (Winona, MN was the nearest large town) beginnning in the 1870's. Each book in the series is about a different little girl in a succeeding generation of the same family. They are wonderfully descriptive and charming, much like the Little House series. Here is a link to a better review than I can write.

Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brinks Everyone knows Caddie, too, right? Caddie was also a real person and the stories handed down in her family about her adventures are retold in this book by her granddaughter. Caddie lived in Dunn County, WI in 1864.

On the other side of the state, Laura's Ma, Caroline lived in Brookfield, WI, near Milwaukee. Her adventures are told in the Caroline Series of books by Celia Wilkins.

The Journey of Emilie tells the story of the hard life of a girl who emigrated to Sheboygan, WI from Germany in 1855. It's not a terribly well-written story, it's part of a series called The Immigrants' Chronicles, a fairly page-mill series, but it shows the hardships of immigrant life.

We also found Pioneer Girl: The Early Life of Frances Willard by Clara Ingram Judson is a story written in 1935 about a family who moves from Ohio west to Janesville, WI. It is a charming little story with wonderful old-fashioned illustrations by Genevieve Foster

Field Trip!

Hurry! The train is coming!Wyalusing State Park. The train is crossing the Wisconsin River. From this bluff, you can see the confluence of the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers.
Plaque commemorating the spot (below this bluff) where Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet first entered the Mississippi River from the Wisconsin River.
Next stop was Villa Louis in Prairie du Chien. We WERE the tour group, so we had a very private and special tour. The tour guide even let us have an up close peek in several rooms.

After the tour of the house, we went to the Fur Trade Museum. The girls got to see a felt beaver hat -- the real thing! The displays reiterated everything we have read about this time and we got to see a "trading post" and they had fun spotting all the trade goods inside. There were displays showing the the life of the Navtive American changed because of the fur trade.
It was also so cool to touch a real beaver pelt.
Villa Louis is located on St. Feriole island, so after the Fur Trade Museum, was crossed the road to play in the Mississippi River.
It was only at 11 feet.
The kids had fun finding shells on the shore. How many interesting little shelled animals live in the river!
Homeschooling. Where you can take a field trip to see what you've been reading about.

Exploring Wisconsin

We've just finished this book, an exciting story about a very dedicated Jesuit missionary who was at heart an explorer. Together with Louis Joliet, he was the first white man to portage between the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers and find where the Wisconsin meets the Mississippi. They sailed all the way down the Mississippi to the Arkansas River where they turned back. Their discovery, as far as white explorers go, is really under-appreciated and overshadowed by the story of Lewis and Clark.

The territory Marquette and Joliet explored was so far in the wilderness, at the time, that very few Indians they encountered had even had any first-hand experience there. Their trek was done in birchbark canoes (two of them) with nine men (M & J included) The technology was so much more primitive at the time than what Lewis and Clark had at their disposal.

At any rate, it was an amazing discovery in their time and opened the west to settlement and further exploration.

The book was written by Jim Kjelgaard (of adventure dog story fame) in 1951 and, I would imagine, is largely based on the journals of Pere Marquette. We had some good discussion of the attitudes toward the Indian people demonstrated in the book.

As the story is primarily about the adventures of the Jesuit missionary, the Indians are referred to as "savages," child-like, in need of protection, unintelligent, wasteful, violent and more. We talked about bias, opinion and perspective.

Also, as the book was written in the early 1950s, it is not sanitized as to the missionary's work and we were able to have many good discussions about how the Jesuits were attempting to convert the Indians and whether their methods were successful or not.

It is not a very PC book, but it gives a good look at the hardships under which the French lived at the time and a glimpse into the life of a Jesuit priest in the new world. Historical fiction is always more fun to read than boring PC textbooks.

Plus it's a part of our Wisconsin history!

Wisconsin's First People or Who Needs A Textbook?

Today we read about Wisconsin's first people. There were several different groups that archaeologists break into

Paleo-Indians

Archaic Indians

Woodland Peoples

Mississippians

Oneota

Paleo-Indians

Everything you wanted to know about them and more!

More everything you wanted to know

Even More!

Solve the Mammoth Mystery

Mammoth History in Kenosha County

Kenosha Public Museum FREE Field Trip! See the Schaefer Mammoth and check out dioramas on Wisconsin history

Field Trip!  Visit the Boaz Mastadon and here


Archaic Indians

Missisippi Valley Archaeology Center on Archaic Tradition   Don't forget to check out all the links down the side

Article on the Archaic Tradition.

Pictures of Archaic spearpoints

Field Trip!  Visit an Archaic site

Woodland Tradition

This site is really all you need

From the Milwaukee Public Museum

Woodland effigy mounds

Field Trip!  Visit Wisconsin effigy mounds

Mississippians

Milwaukee Public Museum artifact collection (check out the other links at the top to read more about Aztalan)

More about the Mississippians

Field Trip!  Visit the Aztalan site

and walk inside an Aztalan house at the Wisconsin Historical Museum

Oneota

About the Oneotas

Oneota Pottery

Field Trip!  See rock carvings and paintings

Carrie and The Crazy Quilt

Carrie and The Crazy Quilt -- a nice little book about the Peshtigo Fire, of which there is very little historical fiction available. Not Newbery Honor material, but an exciting story that gave the girls a good sense of that event in our history.

And the best news! There are two sequels, Carrie and the Apple Pie and Carrie and Boarding House. Yay!

As you can see, we will be jumping around history a bit, but in the end we'll hopefully have a good picture of our state's history.

Welcome to Wisconsin!

We just couldn't take one more minute of plain old American History and we've prematurely jumped into our Wisconsin history studies!

Here are the materials we're using:

Wisconsin: Our State, Our Story This is the new 4th grade Wisconsin history textbook. We got it from the library. Luckily, there are 35 copies, so we should be able to keep renewing it/checking it out until we're done.

A Journey Through Learning's My State Lapbook This is the first lapbook I've ever purchased. I looked through a lot of free resources and many other state lapbooks at CurrClick before deciding on this one. Not that this one is the best out there, but it best met OUR needs. The girls have already begun their lapbooks. One thing I really like about this particular kit, and something we discovered AFTER we began putting it together, is that there is plenty of "white space" between the booklets, which means we are able to place them closer than they are mapped out in the instructions and we will then have room to add some of our own booklets (we've already made two maps about Wisconsin's topography and glaciation which we will add.)

Right now we're reading and really enjoying Wisconsin Forest Tales It's historical fiction about the history of Wisconsin forests from Indian times to logging (our favorite story so far!) to the Peshtigo fire (children's fiction on this topic is VERY sparse) to homesteading, Dutch Elm disease to school forests.

Some fun little trivial things we've done

Found and colored Wisconsin on our world map

Drew the line for 90 degrees W longitude and 45 degrees N latitude. Guess where they cross! Wisconsin is right smack in the very center of the Northern/Western hemispheres!!! How cool is that!

We ate two apples, one cut into the northern and southern hemisphers and one cut into the western and eastern hemispheres

We found all the interesting places in Wisconsin like where dad and mom went to college, where Grandma and Grandpa live, what route we take to Grandma and Grandpa's house, where Auntie lives.

Today we were reading that some of the white pines growing in northern Wisconsin in the early 1800s were bigger than the arms of THREE MEN around! We made a circle with our arms, Daisy, Pepper and I and THAT was a pretty big tree!

We explored the "glaciers and glacial features" in our yard (the melting snowbanks

We made moraines and till on the carpet using a sheet of paper (the glacier) and the Bananagram tiles.

We watched the first few parts of Sesquecentennial Wisconsin Stories If you have RealPlayer you can watch this in 6-8 min. segments.