Boston's Freedom Trail

We spent a day this past Friday on Boston's Freedom Trail, getting to see the places we read about 2 months ago when we studied the beginning of the Revolutionary War.  While the current city buildings now tower over the 200+ years old landmarks, it was great to be able to step where history took place.  We did just about the entire Freedom Trail, starting from Boston common, our country's oldest public park, and where the British soldiers made camp when they came to 'keep order' in the colony, and going all the way through the various sites such as the Granary Burying Ground where Paul Revere and Sam Adams are buried as well as the victims of the Boston Massacre:

 the Old South Meeting House the starting point of the route to the Boston Tea Party:

King's Chapel with its "family pews" which the kids thought were very interesting to sit in:

Fanueil Hall where many town meetings were held to discuss what was to be done about the unfair taxes forced upon the colonists:

 a stop in to get some New England Clam Chowder in modern day Quincy Market:

the Old North Church where the 2 lanterns were lit to let the colonists know that the British had crossed over by sea: 

At this point, the Charlestown leg of the trip remained, but it was already late in the day, and we had been walking the trail for 5 hours. The 2 sites in Charlestown were the Bunker Hill Monument (which we knew we were not going to climb) and the USS Constitution (which is currently being renovated), but Bunny wanted to take a boat ride during our trip, so we walked over the bridge into Charlestown (we took a picture with the Bunker Hill Monument in the distance): 

and then proceeded to the USS Constitution and saw what's left of it (bare bones!):

and boarded the Water Shuttle back to Boston, seeing a great view of the Boston skyline with the lights in the buildings all starting to come on (the photo is weird, it has a reflection from the inside of the boat):

By the time the boat reached the Boston side of the river, it was dark.  It was a very full day-total of about 6 hours of walking and touring around Boston. We didn't go into most of the sites which had museums/tours (and required payment to enter) because if we did, the day would have been even longer, but we did take a tour of Paul Revere's house, which contained some of the silver work he had made and period furniture. It was definitely a worthwhile trip. 

Weekly Wrap-up: Trip to Utah, Native Americans, Colonial Period, and Deserts

Well, this will be more of a monthly wrap-up, rather than a weekly wrap-up, as it's been some time since I've posted. In that time, we covered Native Americans, desert animals, the Jamestown settlement, the arrival of the Pilgrims, and the starts of the Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Maryland colonies, as well as taking a trip to Utah to explore some of the National Parks in the area.

We had planned the trip months ago as purely a vacation to hike and see the beautiful landscapes there, before we had even planned to homeschool Bunny and did not have a plan for science or history for the upcoming months. But turns out, our new history and science curricula had us studying Native Americans and desert animals RIGHT before our trip!

So while we were at Arches National Park, we saw a dessert cottontail rabbit, plenty of lizards, and flowering cacti.

Dessert cottontail rabbit

We also saw some Native American petryglyphs carved into the cliffs at Capitol Reef National Park. The tribes mentioned were familiar to the kids, because we had studied some of the different Southwest Native American cultures.

And of course, we learned about the formation of arches, spires and fins through erosion, and we learned about geological rock layers and forces that produced suck amazing views.

Before our trip, we did some fun Native American projects(we focused on the pre-colonial period): 

Pictographs

Various art projects

Pizza map of Native American cultural regions

Sampling of Native American food (various regions)

Attempting to build a home out of sticks

After we got back, we started learning about the colonial period and the first European settlers. No great activities or projects though, just some standard mapwork and timelines and lots of reading from our America the Beautiful textbook, Story of the World, the Light and the Glory for Children (tells the early history of America from a Christian perspective), and a few books from the library. We watched Disney's Pocahontas and picked apart the historical inaccuracies and read a few chapter books to get to know the era better:

• A Lion to Guard Us 
• Blood on the River: Jamestown 1607
• The Witch of Blackbird Pond
• Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims

However, we hope to visit Colonial Williamsburg and Jamestown, VA this summer! 

This post is linked up with Weird, Unsocialized Homeschooler's Weekly Wrapup.