Lesson 1: You Don’t Sift for Gold, You Pan for Gold

In an earlier post, I had mentioned that I would be sifting for gold. I got that wrong. I have heard often that we learn something new everyday. I’m not sure I learn something new every day and also remember that. But I know one thing I learned for sure on Monday. You don’t sift for gold, you pan for it.

As with all my other misconceptions, I had been thinking for a very long time that the people during the gold rush would scoop up dirt from the river and sift out the gold. Obviously, this is not even a possibility. But I never thought twice about it. Any images on the internet I remembered seeing had people standing in knee deep water with what looked like a sieve in their hands. These images just reinforced my misconceptions.

So finally we went on the long awaited field trip on Monday. We left home at 6:30 AM. There was an orientation at school at 7:00 AM. We left school around 7:30 AM, and I slept on the bus while the children watched Kung Fu Panda. Around 9:30 AM, we stopped at a McDonalds/Starbucks. There we saw a huge McDonald’s truck parking to unload. We saw the truck and driver perform some amazing moves I had never seen before! I had not known trucks could do them. We can learn a lot by just observing.

Around 11:30 we reached the town of Columbia and had lunch immediately. Then we went on a tour of the school house built in 1859. We were immersed in a real classroom experience from the 1860s as our tour guide became the principal of the school and showed us how class was conducted. I captured the whole thing on my iPhone in HD video. It was very entertaining and educational.

We then participated in a bucket brigade to put out a pretend fire. The kids had a lot of fun and got very wet. After that, we toured the town and panned for gold. That is when I realized, you don’t sift for gold, you pan for gold. The panning process is very simple, but I will leave that to you to Google up and learn.

So although, I do not learn a new thing every day, I did learn enough on Monday and Tuesday to account for several days of learning.