Hopscotch articles from June 1997

Hopscotch archives from June 1997

Voice of the Navajo. (short story)
June 1, 1997... Joyce stood on the front porch, anxiously looking far down the road and out over the painted Utah hills. It had been another lonely day, especially since her father had gone to town and would be late in coming home. As she heard their dogs,...

Sunbonnets and surcoats. (hands-on projects for girls to relive the days and ways of pioneer women)
June 1, 1997... These modern-day girls, complete with sunbonnets and pioneer dresses, are learning firsthand how the pioneers lived by demonstrating how to use an old-fashioned wringer and washboard. Clothes, scrubbed with soap on the washboard, were rolled...

Lost on the trail. (short story)
June 1, 1997... Lucy Knight frowned at the cloud of dust billowing behind the wagon. "There are only two things I'm afraid of," Lucy muttered, "dying of thirst and meeting up with Indians. So far on this trip, I've been thirsty every day and seen more Indians...

What's for supper?
June 1, 1997... What if it were 100 years ago, and the nearest grocery store took hours to reach on horseback? What would your family eat? "Will you shell the corn off these cobs?" Ma asks you one afternoon. points to a basket of corn that you and Pa had...

You can make pioneer food. (a recipe for preparing dried apples is provided)
June 1, 1997... One hundred years ago, people didn't have refrigerators or freezers to store their food. They canned or dried fruit and meat to keep it from spoiling. Here's a simple way to dry apples, as the pioneers did long before food dehydrators...

Sacagawea Shoshone heroine. (Native American woman guided a party of whites led by Meriweather Lewis and William Clark to open the western lands so other whites could follow)
June 1, 1997... It was April 7, 1805, in what is now North Dakota. Sunshine danced across the Missouri River. A young Indian woman, Sacagawea, watched anxiously as a throng of white men labored around eight canoes. They were preparing for a long, dangerous...

Westward, Ho! (poem)
June 1, 1997... It's Westward, ho! The wagons! Everybody climb on board. We're off to California. Hip hooray and praise the Lord! We'll hitch our team of oxen, And we'll hold onto the reins. We'll cross the Mississippi, ...

Female explorer: Harriet Chalmers Adams. (explorer who traveled 40,000 miles through South and Central America, and to Europe, and around the world during the 1920s)
June 1, 1997... The Pacific Ocean in Santa Cruz, California, was ice cold on this August clay, 1886. Eleven-year-old Harriet Chalmers felt her body chill as she dove through the waves. She shivered as she plunged her head forward. Her body came parallel with the...

Without the rain. (poem)
June 1, 1997... Without the rain The plants won't grow. Without the rain It doesn't snow. Without the rain You couldn't eat A baked potato or Pickled beet. Without the rain The farmers cry. Without the...

Indian dolls. (instructions are given for making a doll from 25 cornhusks and a few other simple materials)
June 1, 1997... Everyone loves hot corn-on-the-cob with melted butter dripping with each mouthful. Long before Europeans landed in America, Indians grew, harvested, and feasted on the yellow maize. The Indians even used the husks. Nothing was wasted. They...

Cheyenne Indian girl. (short story)
June 1, 1997... The Cheyenne Indian girls growing up on the American great plains during the mid-1800s were not that different from their pioneering counterparts. In fact, they had many things in common: they played with dolls, played house, cooked, sewed, and...

Over the edge: a hike into Havasu Canyon. (a white girl describes a backpack hike she and friends made to the Havasu Reservation in Arizona for a tourist visit)
June 1, 1997... Most Saturdays I sleep in, cozy and lazy. What was I doing in Flagstaff, Arizona, packing up the car at 7 a.m. on that Saturday morning in April, stamping my feet and trying to stay warm? I asked myself, "Am I crazy or what?" But by the time we...

Cool cooking. (recipe for a no-cook yogurt fruit dip for vegetables and crisp fruit)
June 1, 1997... Cooking doesn't always require heat. Ingredients may be simply tossed together in a salad or blended into a beverage. The most exciting combinations are 633 of foods that are different in color and texture. Yogurt topped with granola combines...

Tye-dyed eggs. (instructions are given on dying eggs with natural dyes; vinegar will make the colors stay even after washing)
June 1, 1997... How many different colors of clothes do you have? If you had lived hundreds of years ago, you would not have had such brightly colored clothes because people did not know about using dyes. Dyes are chemicals that soak into materials, like cloth,...