King Tut

As Kelsey and I were walking up to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum today, I kept thinking about Steve Martin singing his King Tut song. And of course there is also, Walk Like an Egyptian by the Bangles. Anyway... :o)

We are using Mystery of History I for our history curriculum this year. I went through this book years ago with both kids. Kelsey was pretty little then, so it was time to do a second run through with her. A couple of weeks ago, we completed Lesson 11 and the recommended activity is to visit an Egyptian display in your area. So today was field trip day to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum. Apparently, it houses the largest display of Egyptian artifacts in the western part of North America. Pretty impressive!

Here are some pictures of our day:

 Outside the museum, we found this really strange looking statue

 

 Replica of King Tut's coffin

 

 On our way down into the tomb...

 

 ...inside the tomb, kind of felt like we were on the set of Night at the Museum!

 

 Walking like an Egyptian!

 

A really old cartouche, and the card actually still has B.C. on it, instead of B.C.E.

 

 Replica of the Rosetta Stone

 

 Replica of the stone with Hammurabi's code

 

 Hanging Gardens of Babylon

 

Nefertiti

 

I am so glad we took the time to go out to this museum today! We were able to see a lot of things that we will be covering in upcoming lessons. If you are nearby the San Jose, California area, you should really make the time to visit this museum! In fact, I will add it to my Great Field Trips page. Have you had a chance to visit my Great Field Trips page? I am going to be adding to this list, so keep checking back to see where we have gone for some field trips over the years.

 

Do you have some favorite field trip destinations?

Back to our regularly scheduled blogging...

Now that the voting for the My Gift of Compassion Video Contest has closed, I will now resume my regular blogging. :o) By the way, as far as I know, we did end up in the top 3 for votes. We will know on March 7th the winner of the contest. I will be sure to keep you all posted. :o)

Any way...we have just finished what I consider the hardest 2 months of homeschooling...January and February! There is usually not a lot going on outside the home in these 2 months, the weather is cold and dreary, and you spend many days just going through your routine of day to day homeschooling. My solution to all of this to is plan a field trip or two!

So the kids and I headed over to San Francisco to spend a day at the Exploritorium.  This museum (if you haven't been there before) is really an enormous museum filled with many hands-on science exhibits.

We were able to see a demonstration of how to make a light bulb with some basic items.

Matthew was able to create sparks on Kelsey's hand.

We were able to see huge leaves that have been preserved from the rain forest.

After we were done in the museum, we spent some time walking around the Palace of Fine Arts. The last time we visited the Exploritorium, renovation work was being done at the Palace of Fine Arts. It was a chilly afternoon, but a great time to get some photos.

If you look closely, you can see a couple of new additions... :o)

Have you been on a field trip lately? I would love to know about it!

USS Hornet

Since Kevin has the week off of work, we planned to do a couple of day trips since he doesn't always get to go on field trips with us. Yesterday, we went somewhere that none of us had visited before: the USS Hornet.

The USS Hornet is an aircraft carrier that was used during WW II, the Vietnam War, and was used for recovering astronauts from their moon missions.

On a clear day, like we were blessed with, you can see San Francisco from the flight deck:

While on the Hangar Bay, you can re-trace the steps of Neil Armstrong after his return to earth from the moon:

The Second Deck has many areas to explore with many exhibits displayed:

US Flag that had flown on the USS Hornet from April 1942 until February 1945. Notice how many stars are on the flag.

Looks like Matthew and Kevin found something interesting...

The Flight Deck has a few planes on display:

We also took the opportunity to go on a docent led tour of The Island. This includes the Primary Flight Control area and the Navigation Bridge. We had a great view of the city from this area:

It was a beautiful day to learn and explore an important part of history that is very close to our home:

We will have to be sure to revisit some of the facts we learned when we study WW II in a few weeks.