Farm and ranch day is really cute. They learn all about agriculture, and then they dress up like farmers or ranchers, which I found really funny because the farmers I knew (my dad, me, my brother, and um, well, ALL my relatives on that side of the family) didn't dress like people think of farmers: bib overalls, straw hat, etc. My dad, for instance, wore hand-me-down baggage handler uniforms he got from my uncle who worked for Northwest Airlines. I wore jeans or sweatpants and a t-shirt, with a bikini underneath so I could get a tan during any down time I could catch. My brother wore jeans and Nikes. We all wore baseball caps from the local farm implement company. Sometimes I wore sunscreen, and there was also a frequent donning of dust masks.
Deciding to go traditional, Simian Boy wore cowboy boots, a denim Wrangler shirt, a cowboy hat, and bandana. The bandana was the ONLY authentic, used by an actual farmer item he had; it was my dad's. He promptly ditched the bandana and hat in the car before school ;-(
And did I mention the hobby horse? Well, they had to make a hobby horse. They gave us a template of a horse head and face, and we were supposed to transfer it to sturdy cardboard, attach a yardstick, and decorate it.
Here it is:
This is the third one of these things I've built. The first was for Stick Girl when she was in Kinder, and it unfortunately coincided with the death of The Jesus of Cheese's Grandmother, so we had to get ready to go to the ACUTAL ranch, the day before Ranch Day. Simian Boy saw his sister's horse and demanded one also.
They were cute. They took them to the actual ranch. They wore their cowboy boots so as not to be bitten by snakes.
I got very tired of trying to store the hobby horses and threw them out almost two years ago. I'm glad I didn't do it recently, because then I would have been really mad at myself.
The ranch day activities involved relay races. One of those was while riding the hobby horses. One was they had a pair of cowboy boots, and the class split into two teams, to see who could throw more [rubber] snakes in a boot from a distance.
Did I mention that it was very windy? Well, it was. So we volunteers encouraged cheating. My team won ;-)
Another was two pairs of cowboy boots and two hats, and once again two teams. In succession, each team member had to put on the [adult-sized] boots and hat, run around an orange cone, and then back to hand the boots and hat off to the next team member.
It sounds silly, but it was funny as hell!
Then I had to go and make copies. It took me 2.5 hours so I don't feel bad that I skipped out on half of Ranch day.
Meanwhile, parents were NOT allowed at Economics Fair. Each child was supposed to think of a product to sell their classmates. The budget limit was $20. Then they learned how to market the product. Meanwhile, they were earning "dollars" at school to buy things from their classmates on the big day.
With a LOT of input from me, Stick Girl came up with an Emergency Hygene Kit. It contained a snack (because if you're rushed, you should always make sure you eat!), plus a tooth flosser, a Dentaburst to clean teeth, a Kleenex, a Wet-Nap to clean hands and face, a breath mint, and a comb.
If this sounds suspiciously like the crap I always carry in my purse (when I bother to carry a purse), or like a scaled-down version of why I bring to renaissance fairs, music festivals, NASCAR races, weddings, and funerals, it's not a coincidence.
We assembled them over the past few days, but it was really hard to find combs cheap enough to stay in budget, so I only found them yesterday. Coincidentally, I agreed to sub-contract for my daughter on the project and I was up late, sticking combs in plastic bags already filled with a lot of other crap.
To conclude THAT story, she sold out of her product! Kids chose what they wanted based on what snack was in the bag; peanut allergy kids chose gummi bears, and other pickiness was also catered-to. (We used it as an opportunity to unload all the snacks I'd bought that the kids decided they didn't like.)
And after writing all that, I think I'll actually post this.
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