Getting started with a field trip!

This year the kids will be studying American History with Sonlight Core 3+4.  While I've been in homeschool organizing mode the girls have been checking out our books for the year and begging me to let them get started early.  Twinkle Toes (9) is already half-way through with Om-kas-toe, her first reader for the year and we've read the first couple of chapters in The Story of the USA.  Since we have such a wonderful historical museum right down the road from us, we decided to get started this week with a field trip to see how the Native Americans in this part of the country lived. 

Here they all are excited to be at the buffalo display.

In the background is a display showing a couple of Native Americans carving a buffalo.  The Indians used every part of the buffalo and depended on the buffalo for their way of life.

The woman on the screen is demonstrating how the Indians used the buffalo's bladder to carry food or water after blowing it up and cleaning it out.

Now, that's a BIG headdress!

The girls and I enjoyed seeing baskets made by the Hopi Indians. 

This Native American trader pulled his wares behind him.

And that concludes our first field trip of the year.  We'll head back to the museum and take in the Pioneer Town exhibit when it's time to study the Western Expansion period of American History.  Our local museum also has a big exhibit on oil and gas exploration.  Can I just say I love that Sonlight makes learning history so fun that my kids want to start school early?    

Next week we're heading to Indiana and I'm hoping we'll have time for both the Children's Museum in Indianapolis and the Creation Science Museum near Cincinnati.