The state of Kansas is 150 years old today! I was invited to demonstrate old-fashioned soap making at Eisenhower Elementary School at Fort Leavenworth for their Kansas Day celebration yesterday. I had no idea what to expect, but I was just blown away by the wonderful displays, demonstrations, and hands-on activities for the kids! There were tables set up in the gym for the demonstrators, as well as live animals outside. Everyone was encouraged to dress up in period clothing – including the kids!

There were about four different shifts throughout the morning as different classes came through the gym. The kids were on their own to explore the exhibits and demonstrations, so as interested kids came by my table, I told them about how soap was made “back in the day”. I wish I had some of the old fashioned equipment to bring with me like some of the other exhibitors, but I had to bring pictures instead. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to actually make soap on site since the lye can be rather dangerous to work with.

I talked about how they needed three ingredients to make soap: lye, water, and fats. I had a picture to show how they collected wood ash and put it in a big hopper and poured water over it to make lye. I brought a bowl of water and a potato and talked about how the potato would float when the lye was strong enough to make soap (it sunk to the bottom of the bowl in the plain water). I brought a small container of lard and talked about how they got animal fats for the soap from butchering pigs and cows and let the kids smell the lard. I had a picture of a lady cooking soap in a large black kettle over a fire and talked about how they needed to add some salt to the soap to make it hard like the bar of old-fashioned lye soap that I made. I also brought some of the modern “soaps” that we use today – bath soap, facial soap, shampoo, shaving cream, dish soap, and laundry soap – to demonstrate how they had to use handmade lye soap in place of all of those.

Here’s the impressive part – all the other exhibits and demonstrations. I took some photos of a few of the demonstrators:

I also took some photos of a few of the hands-on activities. This is just a small representation of what was available:

One little girl who looked like she stepped right out out of Little House on the Prairie in her calico dress, white pinafore, and matching bonnet told me, “Kansas Day is the funnest day of my life!”

This photo pretty much sums up the day: