On Tuesday, we spent an amazing day out. Its been raining quite a bit recently with many areas flooding so we haven’t been able to spend a day outside in a while. For some reason, that day started off scarily foggy and cleared up to a bright sunny day, albeit still cold. So we decided to get a field trip in whilst we could. It wasn’t as planned as I’d liked as we are only starting out our Sun and Planets unit, and we will be going on another field trip with worksheets and a review of what we learnt, at the end of the unit.
Nevertheless, we began the day at the Natural History Museum and concentrated on the Earth Hall. It was a great and fascinating collection of the Earth and Universes’ beauty. There were exhibitions on the stars, rocks, water, natural minerals and resources, all with beautiful, amazing illustrations and descriptions. As much as the kids enjoyed the Hall, they had a small area right at the beginning which described some of the myths of the Earths past, such as cyclops and Medusa. Of course this was the kids favorite exhibition. They were so animated, describing the different versions of the Myths. My son was even telling me stories about History we have yet to cover in our Story of the World books. I was impressed and a little bewildered that he was naming the different mythical beasts and their stories. It seems kids really do memorize the most random of things, yet he’s surprised when I tell him for the 10th time that his room needs cleaning!
We then went to the Victoria and Albert Museum, I hadn’t been there since I was a kid. We saw the History of some past civilizations but there was a bit too much nudity for me, so we didn’t stay long. The kids found this all very funny and repeatedly asked me why anyone would want to look at naked statues, let alone create them. I honestly did not have an appropriate answer. I realized then that I did not think this through. I could barely remember the Museum and thought it was more of an art gallery. I’m going to need to plan ahead for whenever there is a sunny day and we can have a planned ‘spontaneous’ outing. We did get to see some of the clothing, tools and weapons of Asia. My kids actually were very intrigued by some of the kinds of weaponry used back then. My daughters love anything scary so they were fascinated about a particular weapon which once entered the body opens up. It’s funny how the most grotesque things are what they will probably remember from the day.
Regardless we enjoyed our day out and spent the last hour of sunlight at the park before we had a nice meal at a beautiful restaurant. I love getting out of the house for a day purely for the kids. It’s very stress free when you know that the day belongs to the kids so nothing can really happen unexpected, as you have no expectations. The kids did get some motivation for our schooling and are looking forward to continuing our learning on the Solar System, so they can return to the Museum and understand most of the things they saw. I, on the other hand, had a delightful day as my children were happy and that was good enough for me. There was also the added benefit that I didn’t have to cook dinner!
“You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.”
Franklin P. Jones
Striving For Purity 