Ideas for Pioneer Day celebrations and family
reunion heritage events from my
A Holiday Handbook II
Happy Pioneer Day!
This vignette is from a scavenger hunt with pioneer items and activities: milking a cow, making butter and cheese, growing crops, and reading scriptures. Those that finished the hunt received a bag of taffy treats.
My womens’ group made butter, had freshly-baked breads, honey butter, raspberry butter and ice cold watermelon. Also fresh lemonade (I don’t think pioneers had that, but it sure tastes good in July.)
Some of the members of the Mormon Battalion were working at Sutter’s Mill when gold was discovered. We let the children pan for gold (shiny pennies) in a sand box and use them to buy treats if they wish.
We hosted a wild beanbag toss competition, you should have seen the arms on those gals…
Stick horses for racing and squirt guns for putting out prairie fires and bagging buffalo.
Sharing stories and testimonies written in
Indian pictographs.
We used cut-out brown paper pelts for the structures. You can recycle grocery bags or buy a roll of brown paper.
Do you have what it takes to be a pioneer?
Sign up as a follower on my website and I’ll send you the pictographs, just drop me a note at
pammcmurtry@yahoo.com
July 24th is the anniversary of the day my ancestor, Chauncey Gilbert Webb, entered the Salt Lake Valley, Utah with Brigham Young and the first company of Mormon pioneers in 1847. Chauncey’s great…great grandmother and William Shakespeare’s mother were sisters. You never know who you’ll meet on the plains.
Prairie Party Menu
Serve this on a quilt picnic blanket; use bandanas for napkins and enamel-ware dishes, canning jars for glasses.
Bread bowls for the chili could be another treat!
Honey lemonade
Chili beans
Cornbread muffins with homemade butter
(let the children shake a jar of cream with a sprinkle of salt to make butter – they love it)
Cold watermelon
A crock of crudites and dip
Butterscotch haystacks
Saltwater taffy
Children’s Scavenger Hunt
Hide items around the yard that represent activities and chores of pioneer children:
Tend animals (a small stuffed animal)
Make cheese (wrap string cheese in brown paper and tie with a string)
Sew on a button
Gather firewood
Hunt for eggs
Make a quilt
Sing a song
Pick fruit
Make candles
Make soap
Plant potatoes
Milk a cow (bucket)
Teen Challenge
See how many points you can get by completing these challenges:
Say the alphabet backwards: 1 point for each correct letter in backwards order.
Name 10 flowers: 1 point each.
How many buttons are on your clothes?: 1 point for each button.
Write your name and phone number. Count the letters in your name for 1 point each. Add together the digits in your phone number then add the number of letters in your name.
How many large marshmallows can you stuff in your mouth? 1 point each,
no you don’t have to swallow them – ewww.
Blow a bubble with bubble gum, 2 points for each piece you can chew
BEAN For Adults (could you have bean a pioneer?) Its like a bingo game – use dry beans for markers and move the activities around to different places on each card, cut one up to call with. To win, get four in a row
Last summer, for Pioneer Day, I invited my 2 year-old granddaughter Ellyza to have a treasure hunt in the yard. She took her tiny basket and began collecting oak leaves, flowers and small pebbles. A two year-old knows what treasure truly is.
Need a bit more Pioneer Day eye candy? Check out the cuties at:http://pinterest.com/pammcmurtry/pioneers/
Here’s a super-simple no-bake treat
Butterscotch Haystacks
12 oz. butterscotch chips
1 C. peanut butter
10 – 12 oz. chow mein noodles
Melt butterscotch chips over low heat, stir in peanut butter. Add noodles. Drop by large spoonfulls onto wax paper. Form into haystacks.
HAPPY PIONEER DAY
