Students Getting A Weeklong Lesson In Imagination Sing-Alongs, Drama, Talent Shows Part Of Celebration
Drivers on south Lincoln Street did double-takes Monday at the sight of two sleepy oxen yoked to a covered wagon at Wilson Elementary School.
The one-ton beasts were part of a pioneer life demonstration by Merle and Martha Tucker of Coulee City, Wash.
The Tuckers, who visit schools under the name “Have Oxen Will Travel,” came to Wilson for Imagination Celebration, an annual arts festival this week at Spokane elementary schools.
Other schools will mark the week with sing-alongs, drama workshops, talent shows and presentations by story tellers, puppeteers, a ballet company and a reggae band.
Sponsored nationally by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the festival emphasizes creativity and the arts.
The Tuckers’ presentation may have creatively stretched the definition of art, but it was educational. Dressed in pioneer garb, the Tuckers showed the children two dozen goats, a chicken, a tepee, and a variety of 100-year-old tools and household items.
“You ought to see the 12-year-olds’ faces when they hear that 150 years ago they would be facing marriage soon,” Martha Tucker said.
The students learned “gee” means right and “haw” means left, and that oxen have split hooves and chew their cud. They learned how it feels to milk a goat.
“It’s soft,” said Ashley Woodruff, 6, after coaxing a thread of white milk from a nanny goat’s udder.
The Brown Swiss oxen, named Tom and Jerry, spent the day outside the classroom window of teacher Diane Hunter, providing a periodic distraction for her third-graders.
“It was a little difficult, yes,” Hunter said, laughing. “Every time their tails went up, the kids ran to the window to see. We had an interesting day.”
The Tuckers and their animals will visit Skyview Elementary in East Valley today, Browne Elementary in Spokane on Wednesday, Franklin Elementary in Spokane on Thursday and Adams Elementary in Central Valley on Friday.
The oxen ride in a four-horse stock trailer. The Tuckers carry the covered wagon on a flatbed truck.
They camp in the schoolyard with their animals the night before their presentations.
“We always tell the schools to notify the police that we’re coming,” Martha Tucker said.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo