Lawrence Kids, Fall '23

Lawrence Kids Fall 2023

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In class with Prairie Moon Waldorf School - page 26

Fall 2023 Season’s Readings

8

The Goff’s Seasonal Essentials

12

The First Family of Fall

18

In Class with Lawrence Schools

26

The Family That Serves Together

34

Sunflower Bikes

38

Thank you for reading.

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Season’s Readings

by Dan Coleman from the Lawrence Public Library The Big Leaf Leap, by Molly Beth Griffin, illustrated by Meleck Davis Kids from all over the neighborhood work together to make the biggest leaf pile ever. There aren’t enough books about jumping into big piles of leaves, and this title aims to fill that void. This is the best of the batch of this year’s new fall-themed books.

A Very Big Fall, by Emmy Kastner Cute leaves with arms, legs, and faces are about to learn why we call it “fall” in a big way. Another new picture book sure to be a mainstay of many autumns to come, this tale is not only a paean to the season, but also a parable about change and fear of the unknown.

The Leaf Thief, by Alice Hemming, illustrated by Nicola Slater Last year’s runaway hit features a squirrel who doesn’t quite get fall. When the leaves on his tree begin to disappear, he accuses his woodland neighbors of stealing them in a comic romp reminiscent of mid-century Woody Woodpecker and Bugs Bunny cartoons.

Hello, Harvest Moon, by Ralph Fletcher, illustrated by Kate Kiesler This homage to a crisp fall night features owls, luna moths, moonflowers, and other wonders of the season. Published in 2003, it remains a go-to bedtime celebration of autumn.

Pumpkin Island, by Arthur Geisert In this tale of natural magic, a Midwest river town is inundated with pumpkin seeds in a flood, and by fall the rampant vines have taken over. Arthur Geisert’s centuries-old illustration process is just as improbable. He draws a picture, etches a mirror image of it onto a copper plate, covers that with ink, and runs it through a 3,000-lb. press in his Iowa studio. There are a lot of pumpkin books, but none look like this one.

The Apple Pie That Papa Baked, by Lauren Thompson, illustrated by Jonathan Bean Illustrator Jonathan Bean channels Thomas Hart Benton in this folksy take on “This Is the House That Jack Built” featuring the fruit synonymous with fall.

There’s a Ghost in This House, by Oliver Jeffers Author/Illustrator Oliver Jeffers offers a ghost story to be enjoyed year-round with this triumph of book design. Translucent vellum pages allow readers to place ghosts (the cute kind) in the same rooms as a girl touring a Victorian mansion (the creepy kind), although the ghosts appear only in places she is not looking.

The Mystery of the Monarchs, by Barb Rosenstock, illustrated by Erika Meza Over the years Lawrence kids have helped University of Kansas Professor Chip Taylor’s Monarch Watch tag thousands of migrating butterflies. This new nonfiction picture book explains how researchers and volunteers from the United States, Mexico, and Canada figured out where they go every year in the fall.

Keepunumuk: Weeâchumun’s Thanksgiving Story, by Danielle Greendeer, Anthony Perry, and Alexis Bunten, illustrated by Garry Meeches Sr. A Wampanoag author writes a Thanksgiving tale from the perspective of the Indigenous people who helped the Pilgrims.

Knowing that the settlers have endured a hard winter with loss of life, the spirits of the Three Sisters (corn, beans, and squash) send the Wampanoag to assist, and all celebrate a successful harvest in 1621 with a feast. This book includes a map, a glossary of Wampanoag words, and backmatter describing the complicated legacy of European arrival.

Don’t Turn Out the Lights: A Tribute to Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, by various authors If you were a child of the ‘80s or ‘90s, chances are you gave yourself goosebumps reading the ghost stories and urban legends Alvin Schwartz put together in his three Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark compilations, which are still in print and on the shelf at the library (when they are not otherwise occupied scaring kids who check them out). In 2020, the Horror Writers Association published this homage, for which thirty-six children’s authors, including the master of goosebumps himself, R. L. Stine, contributed original spooky tales.

Ghostly Tales of Lawrence, by Lisha Cauthen Adapted for younger readers from Paul Thomas’s 2017 Haunted Lawrence, this compilation finds its chills a little closer to home.

Kids can now read about the ghosts haunting Cordley Elementary, The Toy Store, or Oak Hill Cemetery, and learn some local history in the process.

This Was Our Pact, by Ryan Andrews This 2019 graphic novel for tweens centers on a group of boys who pledge to follow the paper lanterns their town sends down the river every year on the autumnal equinox. Somehow this moody, hand-drawn fantasy sustains for 336 pages the feeling of being inside Van Gogh’s Starry Night, or a Miyazaki film, or the part in E.T. where Elliott’s bike takes off and flies across the moon.

The Goff’s Seasonal Essentials For obvious reasons, the world of Travis and Nancy Goff, and their three kids (Ellie, Carly, and Graham), often revolves around KU athletics. Between school and games, the crew squeezes in as much seasonal fun as they can.

Lucky for them, KU games top the list. photos by Angilo Allen / Kansas Athletics

The Goff’s Fall Seasonal Essentials 1

KU Football - We love going to football games and cheering on the Jayhawks. It’s really fun when we get to be on the field when the team comes running out. We each have our favorite players that we like to cheer for!

2

KU Women’s Soccer - Soccer is the girls’ favorite sport to play and they love watching the Jayhawks at Rock Chalk Park. We know some of the girls on the team and it’s really fun to watch them play.

3

Pizza Nights at Juniper Hill Farms - We love Neapolitan pizza, and we have so much fun going as a family to Juniper Hill Farms. The pizza is sooo good and we get to run around on the farm.

4

Schaake’s Pumpkin Patch - We have a family competition to see who can find the biggest and weirdest-looking pumpkin. We love searching for them and taking a whole lot home to decorate outside our front

5

Decorating Outside Our House - We use hay bales and pumpkins and have fun working together as a family to make the outside of our house look great for the season.

6

Adventure Walks on Clinton Lake Trails - We like to go on adventure walks around Clinton Lake on the different trails. We usually take a food with us and find a fun spot to stop and have a picnic!

7

Making a Fire Outside - When it gets a little cooler we head to our backyard, light a fire, make s’mores, and sit around the fire talking.

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The

FIRST FAMILY of Fall

For nearly a half century the Schaake family has been helpinig Lawrence families celebrate the season.

In 1975, Scott Schaake wanted to win the blue ribbon for the largest pumpkin at the county fair.

There was a slight problem: the Schaake family didn’t grow pumpkins on any of the eighty acres they farmed east of Lawrence.

“Well, I told Scott if he wants to tend to it, we can plant a small section of pumpkins,” explains Scott’s dad, Larry Schaake. “I never could have imagined it would have turned into this.”

Fast forward almost fifty years and that first small plot of pumpkins on the Schaake family farm has become a regional landmark that welcomes thousands of families each fall.

“It’s really unbelievable,” Larry says with a laugh. “We’re really lucky and blessed. This community has been very good to our family, and we just try to be good to them.”

The Schaake family (Larry and his wife Janet also have daughters Sharla, Shari, and Sheila) had farmed the land east of Lawrence for decades before the idea of a pumpkin batch grew. Larry and crew had raised corn, soybeans, and cattle. The kids were active in 4-H and all seemed to love the work involved with being a farming family. Then, Scott wanted to grow a pumpkin.

“I’m not really sure what got into him,” Janet Schaake says with a laugh. “Scott wanted to grow some pumpkins, so Larry helped him set up a small field. I guess it kind of took off from there.”

The first crop of pumpkins was modest (no one can remember if Scott won the blue ribbon; he was unavailable for comment), and Larry was happy to plant another patch the following year. Then things took on a life of their own.

That second year the crop was large enough that the family sold excess pumpkins from the back of a truck on the side of old highway 10. The third year the highway stand expanded to a gas station parking lot in town. The family would pick the most attractive pumpkins (at that time they were all orange) and sold them

to whoever was interested. By the early 1980s, Larry Schaake wanted a way to expand education about agriculture.

“There were a few ‘U-Pick-It’ operations starting to open, and my dad was intrigued by the idea,” says Sharla Dressler, a Schaake daughter. “I’m not sure how popular he thought it would be.

Again, at this point the idea of inviting people to your farm to pick a pumpkin from the field was a novelty. In a way our dad was at the forefront of agritourism. He really wanted people to learn more about farming and getting people to the farm was a big first step.”

As the years passed and the idea of spending an autumn afternoon walking through fields looking for the perfect pumpkin became more and more popular, the area of land the Schaakes dedicated to pumpkins also grew.

Slowly the family began adding more things to the land. Soon an equipment shed was converted to help people pay for the pumpkins. A tractor was dedicated to the hayrides into the fields and a maze was added, along with more options for snacks.

“It just kept growing year after year,” Dressler says. “Each year more and more people made their way out to our family farm and the pumpkin operation became a bigger part of the family business. All four of us kids spent every day of October working on the farm. After Scott got married and moved west, his wife Kandi started spending the month here working. It quickly became our favorite time of the year. After all these years, we all still spend the month of October working together on mom and dad’s farm.”

For more than forty years the family has welcomed strangers to their farm. Many of those strangers have become friends.

“It’s really wonderful,” Janet says. “We have so many families that we only see once a year. We look forward to every October when we know we’ll get to see them again. We’ve had kids pick pumpkins that now bring their grandkids here. We are so lucky to be surrounded by so many good people.”

Dressler explains that though the pumpkin patch has become a pretty big business, the family still thinks of it as a family project.

“We’ve never charged admission,” Dressler says. “We’ve nev-

er really advertised. We try not to nickel-and-dime people when they visit us. I guess we’ve always played for the future and hoped that if you visited with your family and enjoyed it, you’d tell your friends and maybe come back next year. I think that’s what has served us so well for so long. People seem to appreciate that we’re a family operation from top to bottom.”

Not much has changed on the farm in forty-plus years. They grow pumpkins and welcome strangers to pick them.

Since the first patch was planted in 1975, the farm has been run by the family. All of the family. Larry and Janet have worked with all four of their kids, two sons-in-law, a daughter-in-law, ten grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. They are in the process of transferring the farm to their grandson and his wife.

“Oh yeah, that’s the best part,” Larry says enthusiastically. “Having our kids work here and be around has always been the best part. I don’t know many people my age that have gotten to do that.”

Folks who spend time around the Schaake crew are quickly welcomed. The family treats each other with the same type of Midwest cordiality. They’ll give you a hard time while offering you a

pumpkin donut. Soon enough you might find yourself holding a great grandchild while one of the crew helps a pumpkin patch visitor. The entire family operation is based around the family unit.

Their family is there to serve your family.

“No way we could have done this without the family,” Larry says.

“This pumpkin business helped put my kids through college. It’s helped put grandkids through college. And it’s brought in a lot of friends.”

Dressler says the gratitude the family feels for each other is only amplified by the gratitude the family feels for the community.

“We talk a lot amongst our family about how funny this is,” Dressler explains with an appreicative laugh. “Our brother wanted to grow a big pumpkin and now our entire family spends every day of October helping thousands of people pick a pumpkin from our field. All of our kids have worked here and they all still help out when they can. We are so grateful to this community for supporting our family and this farm. All we try to do is pay them back for all they’ve given us.”

One final note: Dressler can’t remember if her older brother earned the blue ribbon at the Douglas County Fair that first year, but she’s pretty sure he did. After all, the family has had pretty good luck with pumpkins.

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In Class with

Lawrence Schools Take a sneak peek into the classroom as Lawrence Kids learn...

In Raven Harper’s first- and second-grade class at Prairie Moon Waldorf School, students learn to knit and continue to practice knitting in the early grades.

“Knitting is a fundamental class given in Waldorf schools around the world,” Harper explains. “The children develop their fine motor dexterity while creating fun and useful items for themselves and others.”

Krista Hoy’s Langston Hughes Elementary kindergarten class built structures to protect monsters from the sun.

“It was an INQUIRY day, which means the kids do most of the work alone or together, and investigate, try, fail, retry, etc.,” Hoy says. “I guide them through the process, but really they take the wheel. In this case they had to figure out how to build something that would shelter their little monsters from the excess heat. We had previously learned about structures, weather, and shelter.”

As part of Tyler Gill’s third-grade science standards at Hillcrest Elementary, students must generate and compare possible solutions to problems.

“During this lesson, students worked in small groups to design and create a device to move a ping pong ball from one space to another,” Gill explains. “The materials provided were intentionally limited, to require collaborative and innovative designs that students then tested and revised.”

The Family That

Serves Together...

The Prô family spent two weeks together working a medical mission in Kenya. all photos by Isabelle Prô

Some families spend the lazy days of summer reading novels on a beach or gazing at mountains from a cabin lodge. The Prô family spent their summer vacation in medical tents serving the people of Kenya.

At some point in March, Dr. Stephan Prô, an orthopedic surgeon at LMH Health, heard talk at work of a possible service trip to Kenya and asked a few questions.

“I was just wondering if it would be something we could do with our kids,” Dr. Prô explains. “We’ve always talked about a trip to Africa and being able to do work to help others while we were there. When I heard there was an opportunity, I signed us up.”

And just like that, Dr. Prô, his wife Joni and two daughters (Isabelle, 18 and Vivenne, 14) started planning for a medical mission trip to Africa.

“When Stephan got home and mentioned it, I think we were all surprised and really excited,” says Joni Prô, a family nurse practitioner. “Stephan and I had discussed a lot the idea of both taking the girls to Africa and finding a way to do some service work with them. This opportunity was really a great blessing to our family.

The girls were both excited about the idea.”

Daughter Isabelle jumped at the idea to travel to another continent and help with a medical mission. The senior at Free State has an eye on a medical career and her parents have instilled a desire to serve.

“My first reaction was surprise and shock but it shortly turned to excitement,” says Isabelle. “I’ve always wanted to do a medical mission trip, but never believed I would be able to do it so early on in my life. I definitely plan on going again if I am able.”

The family of four spent two weeks with Kansas2Kenya, an organization that works to help sustainable organizations in Kenya.

The Pros served in three different camps that aid medical efforts to underserved citizens. The family served whoever came into the medical tent. Isabelle and Vivenne served next to their medically trained parents. By all accounts, they held their own.

“I can’t begin to explain how proud of them we are,” Stephan says. “Joni and I were both a little nervous about how they would handle some situations, but they were so great. They stepped up when asked and took charge of situations when they could. We are so proud of them.”

Joni mentioned that both she and Stephan has some reservations before the family arrived at the first medical appointment. Neither Isabelle or Vivenne had experience with medical practices and they would have no warning about what ailment they might be tasked with.

“I think it was eye-opening, obviously,” Joni says. “I don’t think it took long for the girls to appreciate the lives they live here in Kansas. They saw people their own ages come in with serious health issues. They didn’t back down or slink away. The girls really rolled up their sleeves and did whatever they could to help whomever

needed it.”

“A younger woman came into the tent with a severe wound wrapped in cotton,” Stephan explains. “It was clear not long after we met her that she had a terrible infection, and the only option was amputation. As I examined the wound and explained the situation to her, my own daughter was in the tent with us helping the entire time. I never imagined I’d be in a situation like that. The girl, even with the news, was so gracious, optimistic and thankful for the help. That was an intense situation and I think it left an impression.”

The work was stressful, but Isabelle and Vivenne didn’t complain.

In fact, both girls have said they’d like to pursue a career in a medical field.

“The most challenging part of the trip was setting aside my emotions to take care of those in need,” Isabelle explains. “The days

“They stepped up when asked and took charge of situations when they could. We are so proud of them.” were long, stressful, and full of hard work. The most rewarding part of the trip was seeing the impact we held on others’ lives. The connections and friends we made will always stay with us. Even though we couldn’t always communicate due to the language barrier, just seeing the bright smile light up their faces said more than enough.”

The trip wasn’t all work. The family ended their time in Africa with a safari, which gave Isabelle a chance to flex her sizeable photography skills.

The flight back to the states gave the family time to decompress and reflect on the experience. At one point, Stephan says, he and Joni asked each girl what, if anything, they learned from the experience.

“They both mentioned how apparent it was that you really don’t need a lot to be happy and gracious,” he says. “Having our kids understand that is a blessing and we are thankful for the experience.”

“I learned what it means to work hard and give all your energy to help others,” Isabelle says. “It was a large lesson for me to be selfless and humble, something I continue to work at today.”

photo by Jennifer Kongs

Now that the sun isn’t scorching, kids can spend more time outside cruising on their bikes.

Our friends at Sunflower Outdoor and Bike offer tips to keep your kids cruising safely.

It doesn’t take much to create an adventure on two wheels. Take a bike, add a helmet, lights, reflectors, and bells and you are set for a fun fall season in Lawrence!

Riding bikes benefits children and adults of all ages. Kids these days tend to think too often that the only visual stimulation comes from screens. However, get them out on their bikes with the wind blowing through their hair and their lungs pumping and a whole new world opens up before their eyes.

The fall season is perfect for cycling! Cooler temps allow kids to ride longer and the leaves crunching under their tires provide a new soundtrack to a common ride. Best of all, they’re discovering their ways around town while getting some great exercise.

Learning to ride a bike is one of life’s great simple joys. It’s fun, fulfilling, and practical. It’s a free activity that can be enjoyed with family and with friends or just by oneself. Whether it’s one of Lawrence’s family friendly parks, a dirt road, or on neighborhood sidewalks, bike riding connects children socially while boosting self-esteem and joy.

photo by Dan Hughes