Fourth Grade Field Trip

Trevor's class took a trip to Monticello and the Virginia Frontier Culture Museum on Friday. Me and another good friend of mine who has a son in the same grade decided we would go and be chaperones.  The kids got to ride in those comfort buses, and were so excited that they got to watch tv and play their ipods and things while they were traveling. We had to be AT the school at 6:30 AM. It takes us 20 minutes to get to the school and add in getting ready and you can guess we pretty much didn't go to bed the night before, or that was what it felt like anyway.

 This was when we first arrived, waiting to get instructions on where to go first and getting some silliness out.

 Trevor's teacher took her class over on these steps for some behavioral instruction. Things like not to talk when the tour guide is talking, don't touch anything, don't touch anything, and don't touch anything.

 Apparently we were running a little behind after the restroom break that seemed to take an hour. So we had the very very quick version of the outside of the house before we were due on the front steps for our scheduled tour.

 You know that scene in the movie Home Alone where the whole family is running thru the airport frantically, well that is kind of what the outside tour felt like. Add in an apparently very out of shape mom and chaos would be a good word for it.

 The home was certainly beautiful. I think this is the front entrance, but if you know anything about my sense of direction, it may not be.

 Here we are meeting our tour guide. I cannot remember his name, but after hearing him for the first 5 minutes I was calling him Encyclopedia Brown. He knew so much about Thomas Jefferson and Monticello, it was amazing and he was SO animated with his story telling. You could tell he really, really, really enjoyed his job.I wanted to listen to him for hours.

 The boys weren't as thrilled as the moms were, we were all wanting to take notes or something and hated that we didn't listen better in history classes when we were younger.

 Pictures aren't allowed inside the house, but the rooms were pretty neat and had such character. What I didn't know was that good ole Tom went to France, actually I think he was a diplomat for France(?) and when he came back he loved French architecture so much that he wanted it in his home.  Well, as you can imagine, that ran into quite a bit of money. So much so, that when he died he was so deeply in debt that they had to sell the house and everything in it to cover it. So nothing inside the house actually belonged to him. That kind of took the coolness out of it. (and also reminded me of some much more recent American administration, ahem.)

 Here is their class with their teacher, she has two student teachers and there were about 6 parent chaperones, so there wasn't much "chaperone-ing" to be done.

 One of the very few pictures I got of him alone. He pretty much disowned me the entire trip and wouldn't walk with me on the tours, and when I wanted to talk to him would give me this look like mom you are really bugging me. So I think this may be the last field trip with him. Which makes me very very sad.

Here is yet another view, but again it looks the same to me, so I may have gotten several pictures of the same side of the house.

 Next we visited his grave. For some reason people had thrown coins on it, like a wishing well? or the mall fountain? I didn't quite understand that one. If they were all pennies which have Monticello on them, it may have made a bit more sense, I guess?

 Then we made the long trip down the mountain, bonus info, Monticello means "little mountain". We loaded the buses and headed to the culture museum. I did not know ahead of time, but was all outdoors, spread over several acres, in which you had to walk to each country, which is why my calves are still aching. 

 I thought these chickens were the prettiest chickens I had ever seen. They had these mohawks on their heads and were very fast.

 It seems I am destined to see pigs wherever I go. This one would not have fit my pet qualification. He snorted constantly and was loud and stinky.

 This was inside a Scotland home. All of these homes were real houses that existed in their said countries. The houses were taken apart and moved to the museum grounds.

 That is a dirt floor and this bedroom was for the parents. The children slept in the floor or pretty much wherever they could find a spot.

 I didn't get pictures of all the houses, but in Scotland, England, and Ireland they were all very quaint, usually only 2-3 rooms and rustic is an understatement.

 In the German house, the man "living" there told us about family life inside the house. They would typically take a bath once a month. The process of doing that was heating the water in big copper kettles in the kitchen and there was one tub brought into the living area. The oldest residents got to use it first, which was usually grandparents, then parents, and children and babies were last. ALL using the SAME water. This is where the phrase, "don't throw the baby out with the bath water" came from. I could not imagine putting my baby in that water by the time all of those people who hadn't bathed in a month used it!! Much less getting in it myself after 2-3 sweaty men were in it!

 Trevor has tools called cards here and there is wool on them. This is how they would soften and clean the wool to make thread from it.

 This was a typical African village. The husband would have his own house and one for each of his wives, in this case was two. The husbands' house had two rooms which was apparently very fancy. The wives houses were on either side of him, so I guess he played rock, paper, scisssors with them? :-)

 The American house was by far so much bigger and more modern than the others. It looked like a house you would see today. So I guess the American desire to have bigger and better was established a long time ago.

 Wes will love seeing these pictures. The American tour guide had a job for the children to stack the wood in the wood shed. Trevor was well versed in this, so he probably felt right at home.

 This was one of the American houses. They were all log cabins.

I think having sheep in your front yard would be so quaint and homely looking! In some ways I would have LOVED living in this age of American history, things were so much simpler, less stressful, time didn't go by so fast, everyone knew the value of hard work, and that sounds wonderful, until it was time to take a bath.

We then headed home, we were able to take the boys in the car with us so we didn't have to follow the bus all the way home. The boys played video games and we cried and discussed how grown up they were and how they didn't need or want us anymore.