The Oregon Trail lesson plan

The Oregon Trail 

In the car on the way to the library, when discussing various specialty license plates available in Oregon, Ellie's curiosity was sparked by the Oregon Trail plates. So in homeschooler fashion, we checked out some books about the Oregon Trail including:

Daily Life in a Covered Wagon 

and 

Buffalo Gals

And I remembered I had 

Bound for Oregon 

at home already. 

Quote from Scholastic Book website:

"Nine-year-old Mary Ellen Todd, filled with the pioneer spirit, treks cross country in 1852 with her family in search of a better life. The Todds survive Indians and swollen rivers, but what will happen when mother has a new baby and winter arrives?"

So we looked at some pages of Daily Life and read a bit about the example family. Then we started reading Bound for Oregon. 

This helped to get some pictures in our minds of what exactly the wagons looked like and we even referred back to the Daily Life book at times when Ellie questioned things like "What is the wagon tongue?"

Ellie and Penny both agreed they were happy they didn't have to collect buffalo chips to build a campfire to cook on. 

Ellie was particularly interested in making pancakes or johnny cakes. 

In Bound for Oregon the Mary Ellen's mother learns a trick, instead of spending time churning butter, they could hang the milk pail from the back of the wagon and the pail would be shaken/jostled around enough throughout the day that the butter would get churned by itself. 

So, we decided to make our own butter. 

Just pour whipping cream (we used non-"heavy" version) into a jar with lid (or fashion a lid with plastic and jar ring) and shake. 

When I first learned this method (when I was getting my ECE degree) we used baby food jars and added a marble to help agitate the cream. 

Soon we learned that in a bigger jar, the marble can get enough pressure behind it to actually bust out the bottom of the jar! 

So I tested it without a marble and it worked just the same. 

Strain it (or just pour over a slotted spoon)

And put into a container in the fridge. 

The liquid strained off is buttermilk! 

Then because I had a lot of extra whipping cream (and visions of buttermilk biscuits in the future) I whipped up (pun intended) a bunch more butter in the Vitamix with this recipe: 

https://www.vitamix.com/recipes/butter

(Note: after doing step 5 like 8 times waiting to move to step 6, I decided to try the plunger attachment and it was much easier than the spatula method). 

Then, because we needed something to put the butter on, we made Johnny Cake (after googling a bunch I found that "johnny cakes" = cornmeal pancakes

And 

"johnny cake" = cornbread)

Since the picture in the Daily Life book that interested Ellie showed what looked like cornbread, 

and because I prefer the oven to cook for me over standing at a hot oily skillet, we went with cornbread. 

This recipe: 

https://www.google.com/amp/www.food.com/amp/recipe/pas-old-fashioned-johnny-cake-cornbread-208434

What you see in the picture is 1 batch of that recipe. Too much for us (I don't really like cornbread and my kids are small) I should have halved it. 

We mixed up honey butter and garlic butter for variety. 

While we churned our butter, we watched Episode 5 of this Amazon Prime show

Which is a child's story (narrated by a child) of her family's journey overland. 

And this Amazon Prime Video

Which hardly kept the kids attention but my husband and I enjoyed. 

Related Activities 

A couple days after making butter, we had leftover butter and the byproduct, buttermilk. So we made buttermilk biscuits  with both. 

We followed this recipe : 

Expansion Idea for more science/math: 

Test how much butter/buttermilk comes from X cups (or carton) of cream and compare cost of purchased butter  or carton of buttermilk vs cost of carton of whipping cream. 

Also, compare results if using heavy whipping cream vs regular whipping cream. 

Book: Apples to Oregon

We built a wagon similar to the one in the story with play trees and the fruit from Hi Ho Cherry-O in toy wagon made from a dollar tree basket and Duplo train, plus an antique wagon toy and some animals from our farm toy bin. 

The Apples to Oregon book I got from Amazon actually was a misprint or very oddly damaged in that it stopped about a 3rd of the way through, (which I didn't realize until we started the activities) so we pulled up YouTube on the tv and watched the book read by someone else. 

Also played Orchard, a cooperative preschool game. 

We have a card game version that is even more simple. 

Also pulled out HiHoCherry-O to go with the fruit tree theme. 

Around chapter 4 of Bound for Oregon: Introduction of prairie dogs so we read:

The Prairie That Nature Built 

This is a beautiful book of all the layers of nature within the prairie above and below ground. I especially like that the child at the end could easily be viewed as either boy or girl, pronouns aren't used, artwork is from the back/legs. 

Also this book is about how the buffalo were mostly killed off as white settlers settled and how important the buffalo were to the land. 

The Buffalo Are Back

More ideas yet to do: 

Sun Bonnet sewing. 

Also; sister has this game for us to borrow.

Another Idea: 

Build a wagon and stock with supplies.  

Another plan we have is to visit the Oregon Trail Museum in Oregon City next month,

 And possibly do the Oregon Trail 5K run. 

Also, the Bound for Oregon book ends with the family settling in Howell Prairie, which is very near to where we live in Salem, we plan to drive down Howell Prairie road and talk about how much things have changed. 

Another idea I considered as we read Bound for Oregon was to get a big wall map of the US and trace lines along where the overlanders traveled and draw pictures of part of the story, like turning the wagons into boats to cross rivers, and pin them up along the path. 

Some Notes about Bound for Oregon, (mild spoilers included in my notes here)

Early in the book a fellow overlander was trying to pick a fight with the father and the father chose to avoid the fight and keep civil. I really like how this was handled. Lots of potential for conversation here.

About chapter 8? the n word is used and other negativity about black people is mentioned as another family in the wagon train talks about slaves. The main character's family is defensive of the slaves and says they should be free.

Also around chapter 11 are a lot of back to back deaths (stillborn baby, another wagon's mother and father, Mary Ellen comes across piles of dead Indian bodies, and oxen, the only death in the main character family is the pet cow when crossing the Kaw river though) and overall sadness. Another family's father gets delusional and violent, I felt it necessary to edit out the part about him swinging a knife at his kids as I read to my 3&6 year olds, and just said he was not acting like himself and it worried his family. I recommend not stopping after 11 and just keep reading through chapter 12 after 11 for comic and new hope relief.

We really enjoyed the book and it worked really well to tell the story, from a child's perspective. It is based on a book written by Mary Ellen's daughter

Here is the grown up Mary Ellen Todd-Applegate

If you have done any Oregon Trail themed activities or have books to recommend, please leave them in the comments below!