Jul 2, 2018

Freeschoolin' A Field Trip!!!

This week we went on a field trip to St. Marie Among the Hurons village and museum with our un/homeschool community!

It was a really unique opportunity for Hope in many ways as she'd never been to a historical site like this and the tour through the village was quite structured, something Hope was not used to.

We started out in a theatre room for a 20 minute documentary on the history of the village we were about to see. The tour leaders gave us rules for communicating (hands up to answer or ask a question) and appropriate behavior in the village and museum; no running or yelling etc.

Then finally we set out to follow our tour leaders into the village who stopped us at points they were covering in their program.

We touched many kinds of furs, learned about what the people ate in the village and how they survived. They even served us corn bread, but we had already brought organic corn bread muffins, so we just ate those. The tour led us to buildings we could explore and even try out the furniture.

We learned about the religious beliefs and rituals of the village community and they even put on a waterway presentation for our group to show how they let canoes in and out of the village through a kind of lift lock system that was really amazing.

There were some hands on fire starting activities everyone could try after a successful demonstration period. Freeschoolin' Daddy made sure the kids had a go.

After trekking through the village, it was time to hit up the attached museum. It included digging for 'artifacts', exploring exhibits and learning how to respect one another and museum rules.

We had a fun day with our homeschool friends and we all learned so much!

Hope did well with all the waiting and sitting in places, but was very glad that she doesn't have to do that all the time. She found it restrictive and unfamiliar but identified the rules she had to follow as very school minded, something she's not interested in at all, other than in roleplay games. There was a little issue with the 'dirt' they were digging in at the museum as all the kids (including Hope) were flinging it excitedly and without care to get to the 'artifacts' at the bottom. A gentle but serious reminder to respect everyone's bodies was all it took to calm the frenzy into a safe experience for all.