NORTHRIDGE : 4th-Graders Find Fool’s Gold at School

Gold was discovered Monday at Balboa Elementary School.

Actually, it was only pyrite, or “fool’s gold,” sought by about 80 fourth-graders from a metal tub inside a school auditorium.

But when some of the shiny kernels were found amid the panfuls of gravel and water scooped up by the students, it was as if the Gold Rush of 1849 had hit California once again.

“I found some!” one boy exclaimed.

“Where?” others asked as they crowded around him with their own pans ready.

“Ooohh, we’re going to be rich,” they all announced.

The “gold-panning” session was part of a series of exercises taken from life in pioneer California.

The event was the culmination of a year of California history lessons for the Northridge school’s fourth-grade magnet program.

Other exercises included shaving with a straight-edge razor (actually a butter knife), grinding wheat into flour, fashioning arrowheads and farming tools from chips of slate rock and hand-spinning bracelets from freshly sheared clumps of wool.

The purpose of the event was to provide the students with first-hand knowledge of life in frontier California, school officials said.

“The history becomes more meaningful when they’re actually doing the things they learned about in class,” said music teacher Mandy Brigham, who conducted a sing-along during the event.

“The whole idea is to get them to figure out on their own how things worked back then,” added Katherine Vandenberg, who coordinated the day’s activities.

The children complained about some of the exercises at first, Vandenberg said, because they quickly realized that a simple task like filling a small bucket with water isn’t so easy when done with an old-fashioned pump.

But, Vandenberg added, “I would just tell them to keep going at it and eventually they’d get the hang of things.”

Michele Ireland demonstrated what practice can accomplish by expertly whisking away at her false beard in front of an antique shaving mirror.

“I like this exercise the best,” she said. “It’s new and interesting.”

“It becomes fun for them,” Vandenberg said. “And they can gain an appreciation for some modern conveniences.”

Fran Indernmill, who volunteered to assist in coordinating the event, wasn’t so sure the children knew they had things so easy. At 70, she is grandmother of two students attending Balboa Elementary.

“When I was 6, I had to pump water like that all the time at my grandfather’s ranch in Kansas,” she said. “Some of these kids think I’m ancient because I had no TV when I grew up.

“So many things have changed.”

Yet, even with all the technological developments witnessed in California during its history, some things remain the same.

During an old-style hoedown, Alex Weston cringed while promenading around the dance floor with a female classmate.

He grumbled later that he didn’t like the square dancing because “They make you dance with girls.”