VIDEO: Experiencing School As Our Grandparents May Have Known It

Sunday's ice cream social at the Weber-Blaess One-Room Schoolhouse featured many events and activities that harkened back to the roots of public education in the Saline area.

Activities featured old fashioned games and activities as well as a bucket brigade demonstration for kids. But perhaps the vivid retelling of this community's history came inside the Weber-Blaess schoolhouse, where Saline Area Schools Cultural Arts Specialist Rebecca Groeb-Driskill and a group of theater students re-enacted life in an old rural school.

The troop put on three showings for the audiences in the tiny schoolhouse. During the lesson, they read from authentic McGuffy Readers, participated in a spelling bee, answered math questions, recited poetry, and were forced to sit in the corner with the dunce cap when they misbehaved. Nobody was struck with "the switch," but Groeb-Driskill did explain how the wooden sticks were used for corporal punishment.

Senior members of the audiences also shared their recollections of life in the one-room schoolhouse.

The Weber-Blaess schoolhouse was built in 1867 on Ellsworth Road in Lodi Township. It was used as a school until Saline Area Schools consolidated in the 1950s. It was donated to Saline Area Schools and moved to its Woodland Drive site in 2002. It is maintained and preserved by the Saline Area Schools Historic Preservation Committee.

Sunday's ice cream social raised money which will be used to maintain the facility, which is used to teach 1,100 elementary school students lessons in Michigan history each spring.