Students celebrate Kansas Day in many ways
From deciding what they would eat if they were pioneers to creating Kansas icons, most Lansing Elementary School students found some way to celebrate Kansas' 145th birthday, which was on Sunday, Jan. 29.
Ralph Trites, LES art teacher, got all of his students involved in Kansas Day activities.
Kindergarten and special education students created large paper sunflowers. First-graders made Jayhawks, and second-graders worked on purple cats. Third-graders made clay box turtles, representing the state reptile.
Some second-graders working on an art project Friday, Jan. 27, realized the purple cat represented the Kansas State University mascot, but others failed to see the significance.
Luke Lozenski said he'd never seen a purple cat as he cut pieces out to make one. But it didn't matter, he said, because he planned to color his when he finished.
Some first-graders, students of Jessica Asbury, Jennifer Leitsch and Nancy Collard, had the option to dress as a pioneer or American Indian on Friday when the classes combined to talk about buffaloes, Buffalo Soldiers and life in early Kansas.
During one activity, the students wrote, "If I lived long ago ...," where they decided what they would eat and where they would live as a pioneer in Kansas.
Many students were thinking about the buffalo that once roamed the prairie.
"If I lived long ago, I'd fight a buffalo," Sarah Thomas said. "I don't care if the buffalo's mean, I'd still fight him.
"But if I was little, I wouldn't fight a buffalo."