Staff writer
Hillsboro Elementary School kindergartners shook their booties as they shook their bottles Thursday while residents of Parkside Homes enthusiastically shook their bottles as well.
Each bottle contained cream, which the students shook as they energetically danced to rock and roll music, turning the contents into butter. The butter went home with them when they left, to spread on small loaves of bread they’d earlier made with help from Parkside residents.
The 33 little ones were at the center to celebrate Kansas Day. Most of the kindergartners turned out in traditional Kansas garb of cowboy hats, boots, straw hats and jeans or prairie dresses. One dressed for the day in a Miss KU Jayhawk gown.
Besides making healthy bread from Kansas wheat and butter from Kansas cream, the children brought “Happy Birthday, Kansas” books to share with residents.
“Kansas, Kansas, what do you see? I see the state flag looking at me,” the books read.
“State flag, state flag, what do you see? I see Topeka looking at me.”
Jayhawks, sunflowers, cottonwood trees, meadowlarks, buffaloes, box turtles, honeybees, wheat, and Ike, all state icons, had their own pages in the books.
Before stepping back into the school bus for the trip back to the school, the children formed a big circle to serenade the residents they had partied with, singing “Happy Birthday to Kansas,” “Home on the Range,” and “We’re From Sunny Kansas.”
HES third graders also visited Parkside earlier in the week.