Olivas Adobe Field Trip

Today, we were able to visit Olivas Adobe Historical Park on an awesome field trip! 

 

The Olivas Adobe home is the only two story adobe house from the California Rancho period still standing.  In 1847 it was built by Raymundo Olivas after he received a land grant from the Mexican government for his service in the military. 

An excellent set of docents helped us

mix adobe bricks in the mud pit

Learn about herbal uses and remedies. 

Rope Ferdinand the Bull

Learn about the trade of cattle and their hides

And Take corn from this

To this

To massa

So we could use tortilla presses

To create super yummy fresh tortillas.

We were also able to tour the house.  

 Though the house is quite large, the upstairs only has three rooms. 

A girls’ room

The master bedroom

And a boys’ bedroom?----Nope!  The younger boys slept on the porch while the older boys bunked with the ranch hands.   Instead of using the third room for a boys’ bedroom, the third room was used as a chapel.  

  Which served this family of 21 children and around 100 Chumash Indians and other hired ranch hands.

The house was filled with charming little artifacts like this mouse trap

and this charming chamber pot

Many of the original plants still remain at the rancho.

We had an awesome day and learned a ton!  

Smell That Food

Have you ever thought about what Italian food would look like without tomatoes?    Or Chinese food without chili peppers?   How about Irish cuisine without potatoes?
 
These foods along with cocoa, corn, squash, avocados, vanilla, peanuts, pineapple, cashews, and sweet potatoes were unknown outside the American continent before the discovery and exploration of the New World by Europeans.
 

To cement some of these foods in E-R and I-E’s minds as native American foods, we played
 Smell That Food.

   Six bowls were set up with a doily hiding the food

while allowing the smells of the different native American foods to waft into our noses.  

Next the girls smelled each bowl trying to determine the native American foods hiding in each bowl.
 

Next we compared our guesses to what was actually in the bowls. 

Turned out this task was harder than we thought it would be!  Each girl only got 2 or 3 of the 6 foods correct.
  

We ended the activity by listing some of the native American foods in our History Portfolios

This was an easy hands-on activity that added a bit of interest to our history study.    What hands-on activities have you added to your history study?