High Maintenance Mom

A friend of mine, who is a reading specialist, was explaining the other day how kids who never go out with their families to the zoo or other trips often do not acquire the vocabulary they need to read at grade level. I knew the trips we took with the kids helped them learn but I hadn't really thought about how hard it is for kids to read about animals if they had never seen them in real life or been introduced to them in stories. Of course, kids learn at different rates so showing your six-month old an animal at the zoo might not have the same effect as talking to an older child about animals. And it also doesn't mean that shoving a year's worth of trips into a week is going to have any benefit. We've recently been trying to help explain how concepts are connected and a recent wedding near DC provided a ideal and early opportunity to talk about the formation of the United States...

Our seven year-old had already read a lot about George Washington and the Revolutionary War. We had read some to our five year-old and he had watched Liberty's Kids. One of the issues we faced on our trip was figuring out what to do out of the countless things I wanted to see. To me, going to DC is a big deal and I wanted to make sure we "made the best" of the opportunity. Each member of the family was allowed to pick one thing they wanted to see - Air and Space for the youngest, Mount Vernon for the older, Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial for my husband, and Natural History (plus National Archives) for me. We started at the National Archives and then moved on the Natural History Museum, Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial. I tried to help the kids pick one thing they would remember from each stop. The Declaration of Independence is very faded and now protected by special lighting, the Washington Memorial is taller than everything around it, and so on.

I found that if the kids could do something, they would remember it more. It's something I've known but seemed to have forgotten on our trip, at first. At Mount Vernon the kids were bored until they got to pet the animals. Then I realized that we would benefit more from talking to the people working the farm than just walking around. The kids got to thresh wheat and help make thread out of flax. Afterwards, the kids wanted to run their own farm. We got to talk about what life was like in the 1700's. How food and clothing were made and how everyone helped out. We didn't wait in line to tour the house like everyone else but we did something that was meaningful to the kids.

It turned out to be one of our best trips. I took lots of pictures and plan to work with the kids on a photobook about it. I've also supplemented the trip with a few books about the formation of the United States. It's much easier to learn about a subject when you have a place to start. You can start talking about the past by making bread, having dinner by candlelight, or walking somewhere instead of driving. Using the Declaration of Independence as a starting point, we could then add information about George Washington, fitting a few key points into a timeline. When we went to the museum of American History and saw the Stars and Stripes (flag from 1812), we could talk about how it was made after George Washington was president but before modern grocery stores.

If you are looking for a place to start with introducing your kids to the formation of the United States, other than Liberty's Kids, the National Archives site has a place where you can sign the Declaration of Independence).