Teaching About Pioneers with Milk Paint

Early pioneers had it a lot tougher when it came to building. There simply weren't the super stores that we have today for supplies, and delivery of the supplies that they could order, took weeks and months to arrive. Before the super stores for home supply, before the hardware stores in local towns, before all of it, came good American ingenuity. Use of the supplies that were available right in the backyard was the watchword of the pioneers. Logging was done on the farm land and if there weren't logs to build with, then sod was used. In order to spruce up the home Milk was used to make use as a wash in place of paint. It is not as efficient as a good exterior paint but, those items were not available in the early days. Teaching children what life was like in pioneer days can be a wonderful hands-on project. The making and use of items like stationery, ink, and milk paint can enhance the growth of the child's mind and keep the adult entertained also.

It would be a wonderful project to create a small playhouse with the child using techniques from the past, but few of us have the time and resources to create bricks of straw and clay, as were used in pioneer days, or mills to run logs through. It would be fun to create a few bricks of clay for the decoration of the entry way of a small play house and use the local hardware for the remainder of the house. Once a design is created and the playhouse is made it is time to paint it.