Wagons Ho!

So, we are off on the Oregon Trail.  We've been building up to our journey for quite a while now.  I found a site that takes kids of all ages on a virtual Oregon Trail, giving us fates, chats, and fun ideas (www.cyberbee.com/wwho/index.html).  We have been checking out books at the library, reading biographies, keeping a journal, and even making a lapbook.  To make it even more fun (for me...and the kids, of course), we play The Oregon Trail online.  If you are anywhere near my age, you may remember the old computer game played in elementary school in the computer lab.  This is the one where you see a little ox taking pretend steps and then find out you didn't pack enough supplies, and die of starvation or cholera.  As we've loaded up the family and taken them on the wagon over rivers and miles and miles of emptiness, we've been mapping landmarks, counting change while buying supplies, rationing food with subtraction and division, measuring depth and length of rivers for crossing, and having a gay-old-time.

It's such fun to see them getting so excited over learning something. 
Josephine (or should I say, Rachel Jackson, her Oregon Trail character) has especially surprised me.  She is devouring biographies now.  Everytime we go to the library, she is pulling 4 or 5 off of the shelf...and we're talking hunking big bios.  So far, she has read Laura Ingalls, Amelia Earhart, Fredrick Douglas, Rachel Jackson, Narcissa Whitman, Robert E. Lee, and I can't even remember who else.

Adela is having a blast.  Her main attraction on the trip is the illnesses and the tombstones.  She loves to find out what the symptoms are for each disease and figure out how they got it.  Her favorite is typhoid fever, which is caused by consumption of contaminated food/water with "poo."  You've got to know Adela to see that one coming:-)
Thessaly enjoys giving daddy the nightly report (about how someone stole supplies or we saw Indians) and she loves making the grub.  Her favorite is the bread.

I can't help but note as we study how I don't think I would have survived back then.  I'm thankful that I was born in a time of running water, heaters, washers and dryers, microwaves, phones, and automobiles.  . Having four babies so close together, traveling daily, stopping them from eating dirt or getting bit by a snake, feeding, cleaning, and just surviving would take an enormous amount of strength and patience...talk about having your hands full!
As you can tell, we've been having a lot of fun...and we've only been on the trail 1 week!