Living History

As a homeschooler the term, Living History, has become a part of our vocabulary. Because of our flexibility and small class size, we can travel fairly often to experience history first hand (well, maybe second hand!). (The above is a picture of the first Governor's Mansion in Williamsburg.)

We had one of those opportunities last week as we travelled to Williamsburg, Yorktown, and Jamestown. They were hosting a homeschoolers event and we had special hands on classes and tours! It doesn't get much better than this when it comes to learning about history.

One of our favorite tours, was this tour of Historic Yorktown. Here, we are being taught how the farmers lived. My oldest daughter is being taught how to turn the flax plants that the farmers would have grown into thread to use for sewing clothes. This was such a fun tour!




The tour guide showed us how the farmers were living and then explained to us why they would have even considered going to war against the Europeans. She really gave it 100%!




Next we were living the life of luxury as we toured the Indian's long houses in Jamestown. My 6 year old is enjoying the many furs that they had for bedding! She told me that she wanted to be an Indian, she reads every book about Pocahontas that she can get her hands on.



Then we learned how the Native Americans made their canoes. They would carefully burn a large tree trunk and then they would scrape out the ashes with oyster shells. We are given the opportunity to try our hand at scraping.




Here we are able to get onto one of the boats that they first brought over to America. We learned that they didn't have much space, and they had a 10yr. old boy who would clean out their chamber pots! YUCK!



Here's a picture from inside this very small boat. I don't know how they could stand being aboard this ship for six months!






Now we had to become soldiers marching into war.








The armour that they had to wear was very heavy! Glad we've come so far with technology today.







Of course, no trip is complete until you've cleaned the place up!

If you haven't been to Williamsburg/Yorktown/Jamestown, Virginia, I highly recommend that you take the time to visit. It is really fun to live in the moment of history.