Field Trip: Cahokia

  It has been years since we've visited the Cahokia mounds.  In fact, I think it was 2008 when Bubby was 5 and Mookie 4.  At that time we didn't take the time to go inside the Visitor's Center either, so really this trip was all new :)

  The Visitor Center has a suggested donation of $15 per family which was well worth the cost.  They had life size figures depicting every day life of the Mississippian culture.  Shorty loved walking through the village, which he and I did several times!

  They had some interactive displays like this one in which you could move some hands back and forth and mimic how to start fire.

  The museum was an excellent place to start but nothing quite beats walking amongst the earthworks on a beautiful day!  Shorty was sad he had to stick to the path, claiming he wanted to "climb the lumpy, bumpy hills".  Mookie managed to distract him from that goal by following the letter markers that guided our path.

Monk's Mound (background)

  Bubby was terribly sad that we weren't able to visit every. single. mound on the property.  We did get to as many as we could and find a good compromise for all of us.
  So you don't get to climb on all the rest of the lumpy bumpy hills, but you do get to climb the biggest one - Monk's Mound.

You can see forever at the top.  It was a little hazy because the rain and drizzle was moving out of the area, but in that last picture you can just make out the Gateway Arch!

As uninteresting as this view from the top may seem I have to include it.  You see Shorty?  He's asking, for about the umpteenth time, if he can go down that side of Monk's Mound.  If we had taken our eyes off of him he may have tried it too! And going down Monk's Mound looks like this...

so it's nothing to turn up your nose at.  Silly child ;)
  At the bottom we found a butterfly friend...

  Then we headed back to our hotel, but not before stopping at the Twistee Treat in Livingston - yum!

(photo taken by Bubby)

Field Trip: Springfield's Capitol

  What started out as a way to find something educational and cheap has evolved into a goal.  We've now gotten 3 state capitols under our belt.  Our latest being Springfield, IL.

   This capitol was the smallest so far, but Mookie said it was her favorite.  It is probably the oldest.  It was interesting though to see the contrast of the old and the new with the large digitized screens that were in the House and Senate chambers. 

  Of the three capitol buildings we've visited so far, it was the one that was the most sparsely decorated with statues, and displays.  We didn't feel like we were missing out though.  These buildings are so grand they just kind of blow you away ;)

they wanted a pic with each of them on a star

  Our trip wasn't merely for art, architecture and history mind you.  We found fossils in the floor, and Mookie proudly told me what each type of stone was in the base of these columns.  Do you know where she got that information.  No, not Mom the teacher - Mindcraft of all places!  Well, that will temper my threats to throw that out the window some days...

Bubby with his foot by the shell fossil & the different stone in the column

We had the awesome opportunity to take a buddy with us to lunch and needed to kill a little more time, so we headed to the State Museum. I'll tell you I am a little thankful for the having to kill time.  We had to park by the State Museum when we landed and Shorty about died when we passed it by to go to some dumb old capitol (which he usually enjoys, but not in comparison to something like that!).
  Shorty made some buddies and played with the animals while the big kids dug for dino fossils...

  Right before we left, we were in the area where you could put together pottery replicas. I was telling Bubby how I used to put together Native American pottery for real when I worked in an archaeology lab.  He laughed and said, "let me see what you got old lady!".  So the race was on...yeah, I beat the socks off of him ;)

pottery reconstruction

Field Trip: LOL

  No, I don't have a case of the giggles... the last time we made the trip to Illinois the kids dubbed it "L.O.L." for its nickname the Land of Lincoln.  Ha ha :)
  This trip to the Land of Lincoln included a visit to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum.  We had some sweet friends act as our guides and introduce us to this cool site.  I had heard that they had pulled out all the stops for this particular museum and that can usually mean one of two things: excellent museum or just wildly overdone. 
  The first stop was where it all began, Abe Lincoln's boyhood cabin.  The big kids were drawn in to hear the stories and see the lifesize figures depicting Abe's early history.  I caught a quick glance, but mostly I stayed outside of the cabin with Shorty.  He had caught sight of two fake cardinals in the trees and with the bird sounds playing there HAD to be more birds out there! 

looking for the birds

  After the cabin you walked right into the middle of a slave auction (the red lit area in the photo).  This display smacked you right in the face with the evils of the practice.  A woman being torn one way by her new owner while her husband was being led another by his and the crying child being held  by the auctioneer to be sold off himself.  Mookie said it was one of those things that made you want to cry.  The scene was so powerful that Shorty kept migrating back to the scene.  While he couldn't grasp what was going on there, we talked about what feelings were being shown and who was making people sad. 

Shorty and the slave auction (right) and Lincoln-Douglass debate (left)

  Interspersed with the striking scenes with life-sized figures there were notable artifacts, some of which were from the Lincoln Home we'd visited a couple weeks before. There were also sound and temperature effects (heat radiating from a wood stove, etc...) like we'd found when we visited the Flint Hills Discovery Center.  It's one of those things that I don't necessarily need as a museum attendee, but is really quite fun :)
  The museum did a really good job of evoking the feelings of the viewer.  The hallway with the Lincoln newspaper political cartoons was garish in an Alice in Wonderland type of style - off set frames, elongated and crooked doorways, nearly made me sick walking through the thing.

Bubby in the political cartoon hallway

Pardon my funky photo, but they don't allow flash photography in the displays and it was reeking havoc on my photos!  The hallway leading into the Emancipation Proclamation was equally as suffocating, with holographs yelling at you from either side - what poor Mr. Lincoln must have felt like.  The dizzying effect was reminiscent of the riots hallway at Brown vs. Board of Education in Topeka. 
  Mookie's favorite part was the map that showed the Civil War in 4 minutes.  That's 1 week/second.  The battles would explode upon the big screen.  She was so enthralled that she went back twice!  That is the best part of the museum for me.  It didn't have tons of actual artifacts but it made history come alive!  It made you feel with your senses and your heart all aspects of what was going on!

Civil War in 4 minutes

  They had some really awesome shows too which took you on a short tour of Lincoln and then of the importance of historical documents and artifacts (my favorite one!).   Like main character stated in one of the shows "Our experience becomes your experience, our courage becomes your courage, and the best parts of our lives on in you".  This is why history is SO important!

Shorty and his buddy

 

Field Trip: Hannibal

   Another trip out to see Hubby and some more stops on the way.  Right now Hannibal is a great place to stop and stretch our legs and wait for Hubby to get off of work.  This time we did a little more exploring of the town.  Our travels took us out to Lover's Leap which has an amazing view of the landscape.  We saw train tracks, barges, the steamboat, and speedboats.  When we told Ducky and Grandma where we had been they sent pictures of when I had gone to the same spot when I was Bubby and Mookie's age.

Mookie, Shorty and Bubby at Lover's Leap

Me & Ducky at Lover's Leap

  While we were there we compared the story of the two Native American "lovers" to the story of Romeo and Juliet that the kids had been reading over the past week - edged in a little literature discussion there ;)
  One of our favorite, and cheap, places to go is the local library wherever we are visiting.  So far both the ones we've been too have been great historic buildings.  Hannibal's was really neat because of all the fun things to play with, and Bubby discovered they had every single Hank the Cowdog book and maybe each Boxcar Children - that's important you know! 

  The day ending up with seeing Hubby and some treasures he found for us - a coral or crinoid fossil and coal, which leads into a science/art study just because - I love homeschooling!

Bubby drawing his new fossil