California History Tour

It's been a few years since we visited Sacramento and after reading about Sutter's Fort, I really wanted to do a field trip to a few places. Daddy-o was able to join us and we had a fun day.

The volunteer at the Fort was great and told us all types of stories about the happenings. Peanut was able to jump in with a few facts that he'd learned in our readings which is always fun. We didn't get to see Patty Reed's doll, which we'd read all about from our Donner Party study, because it was falling apart and has been removed from the display, which was disappointing, but there was a lot of other stuff to see.

I love all the old stores.

And the pay scale for the different level of workers was interesting. Glad we don't get paid in cabbage and potatoes.

Daddy-o getting to explain boilers to this kid--reliving his pump sales days in San Diego.

After the fort, we got lunch at a biergarten down the street.

Germany won us over with their food this summer. 

Schnitzel and potatoes, sauerkraut and pretzels.

Although my waffle sandwich that this restaurant is known for was my favorite.

Then, we stopped by the capitol for a tour.

They have offices set up for the early days of the capitol as well as the current rooms, which we weren't able to see.

And then finished with a quick stop at Old Town Sacramento.

It's so nice to bring some of the stories to life. 

 

The Many Faces of Education

Last month, the kids got to see government in action when we went up to the state capitol to stand up in a hearing and declare that we did NOT support the bill they were trying to pass that would  infringe on homeschoolers rights. 

We waited in lines for 3 hours (such a huge turnout--the politicians there that day had never seen so many constituents turn out for anything before) for our 30 seconds at the mic, but it worked and the bill was dismissed that evening. I hope my kids always remember that it is worth it to show up and speak up. If everyone there that day had thought that it wasn't worth the drive, someone else would do it for them, then the vote may have gone another way.

Our new favorite "school" activity--Poetry Teatime. I can't take credit for this idea (it comes from Brave Writer/Julie Bogart, who I listen to on her podcast), but I finally made it happen. And I did make the semi-healthy chocolate chip scones that the kids scarfed down with their hot chocolate.

The basic idea is to put out a bunch of poetry books, serve some type of snack and drink, and let the kids enjoy. By introducing poetry in a fun way when they are young, they won't be intimidated by it when they come across Shakespeare or Dickinson later in life.

We took turns reading aloud from the books we'd picked, but then my favorite part was that Bean got excited, remembering some poems she'd written and ended up pulling out a bunch of her old stories and poems and read them all to Peanut, who loved seeing what she'd been working on when she was around his age.

You really can't tell from this picture, but the kids spent our last couple creek-side park days creating villages out of rocks. Bug built an ancient Greek style palace and throne, while Bean's was a Viking-inspired village with a blacksmith and chiefs house and a museum.

Photo from our homeschool end-of-year picnic. Because we like a good excuse to play at the park with friends. Finding a homeschool community has been key for us--all my kids, wherever they fall on the extroversion/introversion spectrum enjoy our weekly park days and I absolutely love the support group of parents--as a sounding board for questions and inspiration and experience. We've learned about so many awesome classes and field trip ideas, and we've made some good friends.

Sacramento Field Trip

We had the chance to go on a tour of the state capitol with our charter and I thought we should take advantage of the field trip. Sacramento is really not too far away for us--about 1.5 hours, which it easily takes us that long to get to SF most of the time, too.

I have found that homeschoolers tend to be habitually late. We were listening to a really good audio book on the way up, The Boys in the Boat, and were at a crucial part of the story when we got there, but even though we sat in the car until the last possible moment, we still were the first ones there and our tour started about 20 minutes late while they waited for everyone. It did give us a chance to look around the rotunda a little and take a few pictures.

Most of the group finally arrived.

I love old architecture, especially in these domes.

We got to visit the State Senate room and our tour guide explained how it runs in there.

Interesting note--everything in this room is green. The State Assembly room is a replica, but done in all red. Guess that would help you to make sure you weren't sitting in on the wrong meeting.

Another interesting fact--the state mammal is the bear, which I knew, but I found it funny to see the various artists interpretations of bears throughout the building. I wouldn't have recognized these wood carvings in the stair posts as bears if they weren't pointed out. Looks more like a wolverine or something.

And another one--a little more bear-like, but he has pretty scrawny legs.

Our guide was excellent with the kids and talked a lot with them about how important each individual is to making the system work for the people. Maybe it's time to get the kids involved a little more in politics. I need to pay attention to the opportunities that come up.

CA state seal--the kids were able to identify a lot of the symbols in here from our CA history last year, which was fun.

The capitol at Christmas--looks like they were just getting everything set up.

And then, our group went to the CA State Railroad Museum. We had just been there in May, but school groups can get in for free, so I figured why not? Plus, there were a couple things we had to rush through last time, so we tried to get to those.

And some things had a little more significance after the rest of our learning last summer. We listened to a great audio book about the Chinese involvement building the RR, the Dragon's Gate, and learned just how dangerous scenes like this were for the workers. 

And this diorama is of the spot of the Golden Spike, which we got to see in real life this summer.

We also toured the different cars, like this mail car, and a dining car, and sleeper cars. I would love to do an overnight train trip with the kids someday.

We also explored a circuit exhibit--these kids love hands on stuff.

And saw the models, which are always fun. Such a great field trip in the capitol.

CA Weekend

We're winding down our Gold Rush studies and had a free weekend so we decided to visit a couple of historical sites from the Gold Rush days. On the drive, we listened to another Sid Fleischman book, Jim Ugly, which wasn't directly about the Gold Rush like two of his other books we've read, but was set in the same time period, and in Nevada and Northern CA--he must have really liked that time.

 First stop, Old Sacramento.

We happened to go on the weekend of a music festival, so along with the old buildings and museums, we watched a parade.

These police were walking with their paddy wagon,

and came over to give Bug a ticket.

There were a couple community marching bands, as well as some school bands. The festival took away from the Old Town feel a little, but it was fun hearing bits of music as we walked around all day. We even stopped to listen to a high school jazz band that was playing over by the Delta King.

The steamboat was beautiful and sometime, we'll have to come back and eat here, or maybe even stay overnight.

We saw the old schoolhouse.

One thing I regret from the various years we've homeschooled is that I have never organized a group to do one of the old schoolhouse field trips where the kids get to "attend" school for a day. I have always wanted to do this and I know my kids would have loved it.

At lunch time, we met up with my cousin and her family, who live just outside of Sacramento. I can't believe that I didn't get a picture with everyone at some point during the day, but I didn't.

We went to see the old store.

The hardware displays were beautiful--I wonder if the stores really looked that good when they were actually in use.

And then we went to the California State Railroad Museum. It made for a nice intro to our next social studies topic.

Only picture I got of one of my cousins kids--we had a lot of fun with them and are glad to have someone from my side of the family in the area. After the museum, we went to their house for dinner and movie night. They were also kind enough to let us crash there for the night so we could continue our explorations the next day.

Because our next stop was where it all began--Coloma, CA, site of Sutter's Mill and the first CA gold discovery.

We took the self-guided tour of all the spots around town, some recreated (like this mill), some original. The kids worked their way through the Jr. Ranger booklets and earned another badge, and we learned a few new things.

James W. Marshall pointing down to the river where he first found gold.

There were a couple blacksmiths working in the shop, one of the few buildings that was actually open for us to go in.

Peanut loved these "mustaches".

Lots of fun buildings.

I really liked this section on the different mining techniques and equipment used.

As close as they could get to riding a mine cart.

"Oh no! The mine is caving in!"

Even if we had some moments of serious whining and crankiness, it was still a good weekend. As always, history is so much more fun when we can see where it all happened.

And for me and the kids, the weekend wasn't quite over. Daddy-o had to go into work on Memorial Day, but the rest of us went with some friends to explore the newest national park--Pinnacles. I am loving showing the kids how many different types of beauty there are in CA. This felt more like southern UT, compared to the coast, or redwood forests, or the Sierra foothills we'd just spent the weekend in.

The caves we were trying to hike to were closed for the bats who live there, but we did find a few other cave type places.

And we hiked up to a small reservoir, where we found a water snake, tiny frogs, and lots of different insects. The kids started the Jr. Ranger booklets for this park, but had to finish them at home because we had to get back home to go to a cookout at another family's house.

Jam-packed weekend, but so much fun. The kids have loved that we managed to squeeze in 6 field trips in 10 days. I'm hoping to still do some local excursions during the week this summer, but our Saturdays are about to be taken over by swim meets for the next 2 months so weekend travel is over for awhile.