One of our most popular field trips in fourth grade is to Pacifica’s Sanchez Adobe and its infamous mud pit.

The adobe building was built by Francisco Sanchez in 1842-43 and is the oldest building in San Mateo County.

As the former Alcade of San Francisco and Commandante of the Militia he was gifted 8,926 acres of land by the government of Mexico, which is now the city of Pacifica.

Since Don Sanchez, the building has changed hands and has assumed many guises including a hotel, a speakeasy, an artichoke storage warehouse, and now California Historic Landmark No. 391.

When I take fourth graders to Sanchez Adobe we first learn about the layers of history at the site: Native California, Spanish Missions, the Mexican and then the American eras. After our truncated tour of history the real fun begins.

One of the reasons this is such a popular trip for my nine and ten year olds is because it is the best kind of social studies: hands-on history.

My students rotate between three activities: roping a steer and grinding cornmeal, candle making, and forming adobe bricks.

The activity that long remains in the memory is making bricks in the mud pit.

Students take off their shoes and socks and then gather around the pit. They raise their right hand (no your other right hand) and take an oath to promise not to get mud on any other person but themselves.

Now it’s time to enter the pit, students walk in a clockwise circle to mush up the mud for brick making. At first they are tentative and a bit scared of the cold mud. Was that a worm I just stepped on? And then they acclimate and it becomes hard to get students to leave the mud pit and wash up!

Now they use their hands to scoop up mud and put it in a rectangular wooden mold to form the “bricks”.

In some years I become one in the minority: a teacher that enters the mud pit.

Sketching Notes

I returned to Sanchez Abode on a February Saturday morning and I had the place entirely to myself. We had already had our field trip in January.

It was odd to be here without the sounds of students having fun while learning. The local black phoebes entertained me as I sat on my sketching stump near the mud pit.

For my panoramic sketch the mud pit was my anchor with wooden cart and adobe building in the background.

This was a true plein air sketch that would make urban sketchers proud. I used my small travel palette with half pans of watercolor and my Escoda travel brushes.