the father of all field trips

Yesterday morning we woke up bright and early to strive with the Beltway commuters to visit Mount Vernon. This was the field trip that I wanted to do right, but was convinced that something horrible would go wrong as it combines the 3 big dangers: a long drive to get there, high admission fees, and a lot of irreplaceable historical artifacts. The night before I had nightmares that we would get lost, get a flat tire, lose a child, or they would break something. Luckily my fears were not realized and we pulled into the driveway 8 hours later with the same # of children with which we started.

It took me the entire drive to decide to splurge the extra $20 on annual passes, figuring that we will return in the fall after the children learn many useful facts about George Washington and amaze the socks off the docents. "Wow! Those kids know so much, they must be homeschoolers!" To accomplish this I let them dress up in colonial garb in the Hands-on-History room while I visited the Teacher Resource Room. I love the room for little ones (3-8 years) where they can piece together a pottery "artifact," pretend they are eating colonial food, do puzzles, and read stories about Washington. Diana Cordray, the Education Center manager seems to love homeschoolers and put together a huge packet for me of great material, chatted with the children, and oohed and aahed over Julia Ellen. She said the best times to visit were in October, January, and February for the smallest crowds and more interaction with the docents.

The kids really liked their own Adventure Maps which gave them puzzles to solve while we walked from the gardens to the blacksmith shop to the grave site of our first President.

Off the beaten path, but worth the walk was the farm exhibit with a replica of the 16-sided threashing barn that George Washington designed himself. We listened to the colonial-garbed ladies explain about all the animals raised on the farm, including many mules used for plowing and pulling carts like Kit and Kate shown here.

I think doing all the outside things first before returning after eating lunch was smart, but it still took an hour of waiting in a very long line... (this was only about 1/3 of it)

to walk through the house and see the bed where George and Martha Washington slept and the very ornate dining room where they ate dinner. All in all, it was a very long day, but well worth the traffic issues and having to say countless times, "Charlie, put the gravel down. NOW!"