Living History~

 

 

 

Saturday dawned a beautiful day, and my history lovin' husband decided spur of the moment that it would be the perfect day to visit a nearby National Historic site.  So we packed up and headed out!

 

Our first stop was for an early lunch at McD's.  The kids were beside themselves with excitement over this bonus treat to our day.  Their mama, not so much.

 

We arrived at Kings Mountain just in time for the start of the documentary film explaining the Revolutionary War battle that had taken place there. Grace and AnnaClaire are always riveted to these historical films, and especially LOVE our historical field trips.  After watching the film, we got our Jr. Ranger books and began the activities required for earning their badges.  The children hunted through the museum for answers to the questions in their booklets and played historical games.  Once we completed all the inside activities, we headed outdoors, for the main part of our visit, which was the 1 1/2 mile hike up to the top of King's Mountain.

 

Crossing the stream over the log is MUCH more fun than staying on the paved path! 

AnnaClaire~ 7

Kate~ 6 next month!

 

Charlie, 7~ holding his Jr. Ranger booklet


We stopped and read every sign along our way and continued to fill our the Ranger booklets.  We're homeschoolers, after all!

We had the kids get off the path and run up the steep part of the hill, imagining that they were soldiers holding heavy guns and being shot at while they stormed to the top of the hill.  They LOVED this!

Grace got some additional exercise carrying Ellie on her back part of the way.  We had brought the stroller for Ellie, but being her 2 year old self, she wanted to "hike" like the big kids.  Much of her "hiking" was spent on Grace's back.

Finally, we reached the top!

Then we headed back down the mountain, which went MUCH more quickly. 

Back at the visitor's center the children turned in their completed Jr. Ranger books and took their oath to "Explore, Learn, and Protect."  

  

 We then headed home, with the only down side of our day being that we spent WAY longer at King's Mountain than we'd anticipated, and we missed attending a CNY dinner that we had planned to attend.  This seems to happen to us quite a bit~ we end up spending such long times at historic sites, as the kids just LOVE them. Last month we were in DC for a wedding, and we spent the Monday following the wedding at Mt. Vernon. (the kids earned imprinted pennies with Mt. Vernon on them for completing the children's activities there)  We thought we'd be there just a couple of hours but we ended up staying about 6 hours, and still we had not seen everything, so we purchased year passes with which we plan return when we're in that area again for our nephew's graduation from the Naval Academy.


In December we visited this National Park while on our 3200 mile road trip!  The kids earned their Jr. Ranger badges here, too. 

 

 

 

Once again, what we had thought would be a fairly quick visit to see the Arch, turned into a daylong learning adventure as we found the National Park Museum of the Westward Expansion~Lewis and Clark~to be right there with the Arch. And we had no idea.....

 

Stay tuned, because we have another history trip coming up this weekend!  We love making history come alive for our children!