Living History

I've long been a believer in living history. I feel that the more you can actually experience the easier, and definitely more interesting, history is. So this is something I strive for in our school. Experiences and/or reading an account of experiences are an invaluable tool!

Last week, Megan, Nick, and I have been reading about Christopher Columbus and his desire to find a sea route to the Indies, China, and Japan. We read that he died thinking he was in the right area and never knowing he had actually landed on an entirely different continent! Sad! After reading about it I thought a field trip was in order!

We are lucky to live in an area with so many resources. We headed downtown to see a full size replica of the Santa Maria, Christopher Columbus' flagship!

We stopped on the way to get a picture here:

 We walked right past a statue of Chris himself!

Then came the main event:

 The cook stove. We learned so much about how and what they ate.

 The kids had fun helping our tour guide (who was fantastic, by the way!) with the cannon. We learned some pretty interesting things about that too like they couldn't aim it...it had no wheels!

 Megan got to steer :)

 The view from the captain's cabin:

 Inside the captain's cabin:

When our tour was over, the sweet tour guide allowed questions and was very sweet about answering all of them.

It was a great way to wrap up our first week back to school!