Deus Nos Conjuxit: Day in Huntsville

Saturday, May 7, 2016

Day in Huntsville

Friday we had a field trip to Huntsville. We had the best day- I really enjoyed every single place we went. Marc wins awesome Daddy awards for going with us! Our first stop was the Early Works Museum. We began with a movie on Alabama history.

Then we went to the hall of presidents and I learned a lot of things I didn't know about the presidents. They did a quiz and were asking all these questions, and I was surprised at how much my children knew. It turns out they learned a lot of it on our spring break trip to Monticello. That's when we memorized the presidents and bought a few books on them. Apparently the children read them!

Notice the last paragraph on Reagan. Sounds like a campaign slogan I've heard recently.

This talking tree told us the story of Booker T. Washington.

Loved learning about early water travel and what all the different colored flags meant.

We learned a lot about the Native American tribes from Alabama and played a bean game.

Then they went on to talk about architecture in Alabama, but Charlie and I slipped off for a quick trip through the toddler section. :)

They put wooden blocks with pictures of various industries on the right regions of the map.

We had lunch at Early Works and then crossed the street to the Alabama Constitution Village. It's called that because it's where the Alabama delegates were when they wrote and passed the Alabama Constitution. We pretended we were in the convention.

We learned all about surveying and how surveyors divided up the land.

We learned about the state flag and song and what they mean.

We also learned about the first postal system and the horse trails used. I was fascinated to hear how the federal government would determine the trail and the post offices would have to write them and say "too many dangers- please change the trail".

We all loved going to the printing shop and seeing him use a printer. We learned that "upper case" letters were put in the upper case of the box holding the metal letters and "lower case" letters were in the lower.

This actress told us all about what the ladies were up to and the pros and cons of becoming a state. (the children noticed she was wearing a Fitbit- ha!)

We finally went to the room to vote on the Constitution. Marc was made speaker and given a gavel.

Then we signed the Constitution with quill pens.

This year we've already been to "Alabama Village" in Montgomery and American Village in Montevallo and the Bluff Park Historical Society so I was worried this trip would just rehash all the same stuff we'd already learned. Thankfully it was all new information. We'd never before covered surveying, printing, post offices, or the Alabama Constitution so this was definitely worth the trip!

On the way home we were passing the Space and Rocket Center and it was already almost 4:00 and they close at 5:00, but we decided to make a quick run through it anyway (and it's free because of our science center membership)! I'm glad we did because again, we did things we've never done before even though we've been there many, many times.