South Carolina History Field Trip

It's days like these that I love having the privilege of being an at-home mom so that I can do things like this! All the third graders from PHES have been studying SC history all year long in their social studies curriculum and got to do a BIG field trip today!! We were going to go to the State House first, and then over to the SC State Museum after lunch. A FULL day of fun! Grateful that it fell on a Friday, so Callie and Caleb had "daddy day" with David and I got to spend the day with Josiah! :)

We headed to the State House first where the kids had a "scavenger hunt" to complete on the grounds outside. Finding all kinds of different memorials and statues outside, counting how many steps in the front, where are the bronze stars on the building (these mark where Sherman shot cannons at the State House during the war), etc. It was fascinating and SO fun!!

Here's the group I was in charge of for the day in front of the Palmetto statue.

Juliana, Arturo, Josiah, and Sydney

Working on a word search of SC landmarks to complete our "assignment".

We were able to go inside the State House and see where the Governor works and where the SC House of Representatives and Senate work. This picture is from the Senate where the sword is kept. The sargent of arms takes the sword out and puts it in the holding rack above it. This controls the lights, turns them on, and lets everyone know the Senate is in session and its time to get to work! The kids had learned all about this stuff at school, and LOVED seeing it in real life. I, of course, knew NOTHING about it, and loved getting to learn it!!

We had lunch outside and then headed over to the SC State Museum where we got to see all kinds of cool things (and complete another scavenger hunt :) ). The kids were able to tell me all about things that they had learned already (and I had to read to sign to find out about). We had a GREAT time!

Josiah's class with his awesome teacher, Ms. Williams. I am so grateful that my kids are in such a wonderful school and a great district where they choose to make funding available for these kinds of activities. The teacher in me absolutely comes ALIVE when I get to see the kids LOVING learning like this!!! I know that this is not REQUIRED for them to learn about history - but MAN, does it make it REAL for them! So neat for them to see in REAL life what they've learned about at school!!

I did have a moment where I realized I had just turned into my mother. I made the comment to one of the kids about how lucky we were to live so close to the capitol of South Carolina and get to come see things like this. Other 3rd graders in the state would live too far away to get to do a field trip to the capitol building. Suddenly, I flashed back to my own childhood when my mom told us ALL the time how lucky we were to live near the nation's capitol and so close to all the national monuments and special landmarks for our country. I laughed out loud - how quickly the circle goes around!!