Old Sturbridge Village

After our very brief stay in Connecticut, we headed up to Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, Massachusetts.  This is a living history museum.  Visitors travel back to a New England town in the 1830s.  I was excited to share this experience with the girls for couple reasons.  First, it is a place I visited a few time when I was younger.  Second, the girls really enjoy learning about history.  This is especially true of Madeline.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that they offer a home school discount.  I was a bit concerned about this since I do not have any kind of "official" proof that we homeschool, but I was told we did not have to provide any.  This was indeed the case.

As we entered, this caught our attention:

It reminded us of the shaduf we learned about when we studied Ancient Egypt.  It is always exciting when we can make connections to prior learning!

We got a chance to learn about several new things as well, including many jobs that were necessary in 1830s New England, like the tinsmith...

the printer (Isabella was impress, or maybe unimpressed rather,  that he could only make one copy at a time, unlike a copy machine) ...

the blacksmith (where my ringing cell phone with a call from Bill from Turkey seemed quite out of place)...

the carding mill (where the girls gave carding by hand a try)...

and the shoe shop.

The girls even tried their hand at making a candle holder out of tin.

It was absolutely beautiful!

And the girls even found a family of geese to watch for a bit!

I think we will be taking a trip back there again when the girls are a bit older.