Photos by Janet Fleske

LARNED -- Earlier in the week, we shared photos from last week’s Santa Fe Trail Center children’s program.  On Thursday, June 18, the Santa Fe Trail Center Museum presented a one-room school

house program to about forty “students”, three to ten years old, by volunteers Kristin Keith and

SFTC Director of Education Kathleen Foster. The young visitors were able to tour an authentic

mud house and go into a dugout, where people lived while their mud houses were built, before attending a class in the one-room schoolhouse.

Before class began, “teacher” Foster led the students in the pledge of allegiance and then

taught a class in elocution, using the rhymes and songs that were written on the board. The

younger students also practiced writing the alphabet in their session, and the older students had a

math lesson. Foster also shared how students were punished, by standing in front of the

classroom with their arms out and books placed on their arms if the students continued to

misbehave. Sometimes the students sat on a stool facing the chalkboard and wore a dunce hat.

Once the lessons were over, the students went back to the center to complete a craft

where they drew and created a mud house of their very own to take home.

The center will go on hiatus with their education programs until after the fourth of July.

Something special is being planned for their next program. Keep watching the Santa Fe Trail

Center and Museum’s Facebook page for details.

The center’s kids program is brand new this year, and both Foster and Keith are trying to

build upon the success they have seen this summer with brand new programs for next summer.

Please contact the center with any ideas or suggestions for upcoming programs.