Danville-Neel Pioneer Day puts focus on pioneer life
Danville-Neel Elementary School created a hands-on history lesson for its students on Friday with a Pioneer Day celebration featuring hayrides, craft demonstrations, musical entertainment and a traditional Thanksgiving Day dinner.
Students climbed aboard trailers pulled by farm tractors and rode around the playground track several times one class at a time to kick off their fun day. Afterward, they spent several minutes at more than 25 activity stations located both outside and inside the school.
For example, students watched blacksmith Drew Cooper make nails with a forge, hammer and anvil. Eleshea Jones and Brittany Cash cooked hoecakes on an open fire. Don Clark and Waymon Alexander rendered lard from a wash pot filled with chunks of pork fat.
In classrooms, they listened as Eloise Peterson of Burritt Museum gave a talk on pioneer toys, watched Pat Brown and Ramona Roy demonstrate quilt making and observed as Marvin and Sue Warren demonstrated the lifestyle of the Cherokee Indian nation.
Dixie Flavor, a country band featuring Danville High School students, entertained students and visitors in the school lobby.
Other activities included woodcarving, spinning, chair caning, soap making, churning, food preservation, Indian style bow hunting, square dancing, corn shelling, wood chopping and crocheting.
Students and guests shared in an early Thanksgiving meal in the lunchroom.
“This is always our biggest meal of the year,” said lunchroom supervisor Vickie Sanford. “We expect to feed 700 people today, and to get everything ready we have to start preparations a day early. We couldn’t do it without the good support we get from adult volunteers and the student ambassadors.”
The meal consisted of 180 pounds of roasted turkey, 20 hams, 15 large pans of cornbread dressing and 1,152 yeast rolls. The menu also consisted of green beans, casseroles, strawberry short cakes, Jell-O salad and cranberry sauce.
“Pioneer Day has always been a special event at Danville-Neel,” said Principal Tara Murphy, “because of the huge support it gets from people throughout the community. We have such talented parents and grandparents, and they are always happy to share their pioneer skills with the students.”
- Jerome Pace demonstrates bow and arrow shooting for Whitney Childers’ first grade students at Pioneer Day Friday. | Clif Knight
- Second grader Aubrey Reed pets a baby goat at Danville-Neel Elementary School’s Pioneer Day. | Clif Knight
- Marvin and Sue Warren of Mount Hope give students a close-up look at the Seven Clans of the Cherokee Indian at Danville-Neel’s 2014 Pioneer Day. | Clif Knight
- Elsie Peterson of Burritt Museum in Huntsville explains to Danville-Neel students how pioneer families made their children’s toys from corncobs, wood and cloth. | Clif Knight
- Ramona Roy and Pat Brown show students how pioneer homemakers stitched quilts for bed coverings at 2014 Pioneer Day. | Clif Knight
- Dixie Flavor performed for students and guests at Danville-Neel’s Pioneer Day on Friday. Band members, from left, are Chandler Brown, Garrett Mason, Khi Mause, Alaina Wiley and Ben Mause. | Clif Knight
- Danville-Neel Ambassadors Blayne Godfrey and Maddy Wallace, third graders, and Reid Ellis, fourth grader and other Ambassadors served as lunchroom volunteers at the 2014 Pioneer Day. | Clif Knight
- Exhibitors Eleshea Jones, left, and Brittany Cash cook hoecakes over an open fire at Danville-Neel Elementary School’s 2014 Pioneer Day Nov. 21. | Clif Knight
- Blacksmith Drew Cooper, a senior at Danville High School, shows a first grade class how to make a nail with a forge and anvil at Pioneer Day. | Clif Knight
- First graders Kallie Johnson, McKenna Jackson and Kiya Campbell sample country-popped Kettle corn at Danville-Neel’s 2014 Pioneer Day. | Clif Knight