Yep! Spring fever is going on full force in our household! We are counting the days until school is out. Believe it or not, we only have about 2 more weeks of school work left, then we are all done. YAY!
I have been busy getting all of our curriculum in order for next year. It's always exciting. I love reading through the new books. I always learn something new. Next year we will be beginning our history cycle over again; meaning, we are going back to the time of Creation and ending at the time of Christ. The "history cycle" just means that we cover a period of history chronologically. So, for instance, this year we studied from the Civil War to modern times; next year is Ancient History; the year after next we will be in the Middle ages; the next year Early American History again, and so on - a big cycle. Last time we studied Ancient History, the boys were only in 4th and 2nd grade. This next year we will be able to get into so much more - I'm excited!!
Last week we took an impromptu trip to the National Marine Corps Museum in Quantico. Daddy had to go down for a retirement ceremony so we thought, why not make it a field trip!! This was a great opportunity since we were right in the middle of reading about a lot of the wars featured at the museum: The World Wars, Korea, Vietnam.
This museum is highly interactive so even the little ones had a great time!!
Here's Ryan and Elizabeth in the "boot camp experience"
Elizabeth's face!!Haha! She was trying to lift up the pack.
Sean didnt want his pictures taken, but I snuck this one in while he was practicing his pull ups. ;o)
This was a really neat exhibit. The boys and Elizabeth really enjoyed it. You were inside a tent (I think this was in the Spanish American War area) and the light shadows made it appear like there was a real patrol and someone tending the fire. Pretty neat!!
Elizabeth was so excited about going over to the "Pirates" area. haha! Here they had a stop to dress up like a revolutionary era Marine. They got to go fishing, tie knots and read about interesting facts. This was one of the new play areas the museum has added since we visited last (about 5 years ago).
They had plenty of stops to dress up and pose for pictures.
The Korean war exhibit was a favorite though. We even went back a second time after we finished the museum. I love this picture of Sean - absorbing it all in.
We pretty much had the museum to ourselves. There was another school group there but we managed to stay away from them most of the time, so the boys got a few times to really enjoy and "interact" in the features.
Daddy caught up with us about half way through.
The final area was tribute to 9/11. It's not a good picture, but if you look right next to Ryan, the big rusted metal beam is a section from the Twin Towers. There was also a section of the Pentagon there too (not pictured).
