As I said in my last post, we had a Carousel Party for Mackenzie. I showed you the cake so I wanted to include pictures of the rest of the party. We had lots of fun and now Marina tells me she wants a carousel party for her birthday! We will have to see as it is coming up soon.
A friend playing while the rest of the kids count the number of spins before pinning on the tail. We had each child spin the amount of years old they were. Some kids were pretty dizzy, depending on their age!
I searched and searched on the internet for game ideas for a carousel party but couldn't really find any, so Ross and I came up with this one. We have a circular area in our house, so we played carousel music while the adults carried a child around on their back (pretending they were a carousel horse). Ross had a "golden ring" attached to a string with a clip that he pulled up and down as the horse and rider went through. If the rider grabbed the golden ring, the rider won a prize. It worked well until we lost the golden ring. We searched and couldn't find it, so we replaced it with a tiny plastic pink ring. We still have not been able to find the golden ring. It is probably hiding under the fridge or stove. Don't worry it wasn't real gold...just some gold wire Ross strung together to look like a ring. In the picture below, the adults are getting ready to be horses for the carousel game.
Mackenzie is trying to reach for the golden ring as Dad makes it go up and down.
These two are our wonderful and funny friends, Keith and Tabitha. He is Puerto Rican and she is African American (grew up as a missionary kid in Africa). We love to play board games with them and have had many great laughs together!
Martin, Silke, and Finn are our dear missionary friends from Germany. We have had many days and nights fixing broken down parts of our houses together!
Oh boy, the ring is so close! This is Brad and his daughter. They are our fellow Montanans! They are missionaries as well but will be moving to a smaller village to hopefully one day plant a church.
And to fit the party theme, she even got a musical carousel horse from her CEF Kid's Club leader. She loves it!
And now some interesting carousel facts you might not have known! Taken mostly from this site Spokane Carousel.
Merry-go-rounds first appeared in the Byzantine era when very rich men started collecting animals into what would now be referred to as zoos, but at the time were simply privately-held menageries. Because they knew so little about the rare animals they kept, the animals had a short life span. The merry-go-round was developed as a way for these men to continue their interest even after the animals had died.
Children liked to ride the carcasses of the animals as if they were alive. The disk underneath was introduced to give the illusion of movement, and the constant motion prevented flies from landing on the animals, which made them last longer. Some were suspended by ropes and other impaled with moving sticks to make the illusion even more convincing.
In 1845 a child died while riding a merry-go-round when it turned out the hippo carcass he was sitting on was not dead, but had merely fallen asleep on the wooden circle — and the child smelled like a head of iceberg lettuce.
It wasn’t until the horse plague of 1871 that horses became the most common animal used on a merry-go-round. When the disease struck, it killed so many horses that it was more than the hot dog and sausage factories could effectively use. It was also at this point that loud music was added to the attraction to distract the riders from the terrible odor.
In England, the carousel turns clockwise, while American carousels have always turned counterclockwise. It is easy to tell the origin of a carousel horse because the side facing outward was more heavily carved and adorned than the side facing inward. The side facing the audience is called the "romance" side. The reason carousels rotate clockwise in England is so that the horse may be properly mounted the left side.
The people who built the first carousels in America were mostly immigrant craftsmen skilled in the detailed woodcraft of church interiors of the period. Over 6000 carousels were built during the carousel era. Only about 200 of these original hand crafted machines have survived till today.
Some carousel advertisements in early nineteenth century America stated that the ride was highly recommended by physicians as an aid in circulating the blood.
The oldest operating platform carousel in the United States, named the Flying Horses, dates from 1876 and is located on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts.
Measuring 80 feet wide, weighing 35 tons, and containing 269 hand-crafted animals, the carousel at The House on the Rock in Spring Green, Wisconsin, USA, is the world's largest.
Along with roller coasters, carousels are the oldest amusement ride still in use. Roller coasters were developed as an offshoot of merry-go-rounds when a particularly clever carnival worker wondered what it would be like to ride a side of bacon down a hill. When dead animals proved unwieldy, they were replaced by the wheeled carts we use today. Still, in the language of the circus people, these carts are still referred to as “porkers.”
Carousel chariots from the golden age typically had two seats to accommodate ladies and small children, as the customs of that era precluded women from sitting astride the machine's horses; chariots allowed them the thrill of a carousel ride without sacrificing their dignity.
Horses with at least 3 feet touching the floor are called "standing figures." Horses with two back feet resting on the platform and front feet posed in the air are called "prancers." Horses with all four feet in the air and called "jumpers" and are the ones that move up and down.
Well after reading how carousels got started, they might not seem so romantic! I still think they are fun and hope to ride on many more! Have a great night and enjoy the little bit of extra light you will be getting each day. I know I will!
