PIONEER DAY: STUDENTS GET A TASTE AND FEEL OF LIFE ON THE FRONTIER

From a Cheyenne tepee to a kettle of venison stew, fifth- graders at Alma Schrader School know the taste and feel of pioneer life.

On Thursday, the school held its annual Pioneer Day, organized by fifth-grade teachers Roselyn Conrad, Mary Ann Stamp and Sherry Spencer.

Students churned butter, made apple sauce and cooked popcorn over an open fire.

They also tried quilting and made leather pouches. They viewed antique vials of medicine and Swamp Root tonic.

They sat in a canvas-covered tepee set up on the school grounds by buckskin-clothed local members of the American Mountain Men.

The group's members enjoy dressing up like fur trappers and demonstrating frontier life.

A large amount of frontier-type equipment was spread out on the ground in front of the tepee. It included such things as a beaver trap, a spoon made out of an animal horn, a water jug made from a gourd and a bowl made from a knot in a tree.

"When they can touch things, they think about it more," mountain man Roger Ressel said, displaying his flintlock rifle.

Students, teachers and moms even dressed up like pioneers.

Many of the boys sported coonskin caps and cowboy hats, some of the girls wore long dresses, shawls and bonnets.

Pioneer Day culminated a month-long study of pioneers and the Westward Movement by the school's 90 fifth-graders.

The study involved hands-on learning, from making cornhusk dolls to square dancing.

Students even hiked to Cape County North Park and back, a seven-mile round trip.

They measured an acre of land and held their own "land rush."

Through it all, the fifth-grade teachers made one thing clear. Pioneer life was hard work.

"Think of no electricity and no running water," Conrad said, attired in her great-grandmother's black bonnet.

Indian and frontier children worked hard.

"They just didn't sit around and play games in the tepee," she said. "They went out and collected buffalo chips."

That lesson wasn't lost on the students.

"It would be so hard to live like that," 11-year-old Maggie Devaney said. "It's not like you would have much time to play."

Justin Wells, 10, came to Pioneer Day sporting a St. Louis Blues sweatshirt and a coonskin cap.

"It is weird back then from today," he said, standing in front of the tepee. Pioneers, he noted, didn't have cars, video games or football.

Trevor Blattner, 11, doesn't think much of pioneer life.

"I think it would be hard to get used to all the work," he said.

"They didn't have sports and I am into sports."

But 11-year-old Jim Lents wouldn't mind being a pioneer.

"I love the outdoors," he said, adding that he wouldn't mind living in a tepee.

Nathan Foley, 11, was also impressed.

"We get to re-enact a bunch of stuff that the pioneers did," he said.

Drinking apple cider and making popcorn and apple sauce were big hits with the youngsters.

So were the funnel cakes.

"I ate about five," Vincent Oxley, 10, confessed.

"I like the tepee the most," noted 10-year-old Erica Kinnison. "It is interesting and you learn about the Indians and what they went through."

Kinnison said it would be fun to be a pioneer, but only for a few days.