4th-Graders Spend the Day as Pioneers

Outside it may have been 1997, but inside the auditorium at Balboa Boulevard Elementary School the clock had turned back 150 years.

Friday was Pioneer Day and fourth-graders, dressed in Old West garb, took their turns at carding wool, grinding wheat and panning for gold.

Some of the girls wore long dresses and decorated bonnets made out of paper. Boys donned brown paper vests, cowboy hats and boots.

“Did you get anything?” a girl asked, poking her head between two classmates panning for gold. They didn’t answer. They were too busy scavenging for something shiny amid the pebbles.

The “gold” was actually pyrite, also known as fool’s gold, but that didn’t seem to matter to the children.

The activity fit in with the state’s fourth-grade curriculum on California history, said teacher Margaret Friedman. About 160 children participated in the event, put on by Pioneer Experience, an Oregon-based company that sends a truck, displays and a curator to elementary schools interested in learning about pioneer life.

Some of the girls were surprised at the duties expected of women in the mid-1800s. One display listed dozens of chores, from making clothes and washing garments by hand to grinding wheat and shaving their husbands’ faces.

Samantha Silk, 9, wrinkled her nose as her friend Rasha Kazi, 10, lathered up Samantha’s face with a brush and “shaved” her with a butter knife.

“It feels like there’s a claw there,” Samantha said.

While some of the kids said the pioneer days were interesting, they weren’t ready to give up today’s lifestyle.

“I like it better now; you’ve got, like, TV,” said 9-year-old Aram Rappaport.

“And video games,” chimed Joseph Goodman, 9.