What An Amazing Park!!

We found a park that is only 15 minutes from our house but took us back in time to the 1770's. What an amazing find this was! Like most parks, there is a playground, a big grass field and basketball courts.

The incredible part of the park is an island that is accessed by a covered bridge. A moat runs around the island and is home to many birds and ducks including mallard ducks, white ducks, greebs and a few seagulls. We even saw a Red Eared Slider Turtle. As you adventure towards the island, a statue of Paul Revere welcomes you.

Once we crossed the Charlestown bridge we were transported back in time to a miniature town of Boston, circa 1770.

The little Boston town has a group of "stores" including a print shop, an apothacary, ropemaker and saddlemaker. Inside the shops are slides and poles and ladders that the girls played on. Upon climbing up a very narrow staircase, you can walk across a bridge to other stores. The brick wall in the photo below is the bridge.

Next to the shops is a replica of The North Church Tower with two slides. You can see one of them on the left side of the church in the following photo (along with my beautiful little girl)

There are non-working cannons to protect Boston. Here is one of them with my beautiful older daughter.

The island closed early today so we didn't get to explore the whole town. There is also a replica of Paul Revere's house and a replica of a cemetary. We will definately go back and do some more exploring but we had a great day!

Learning In A Non-Traditional Classroom

We used a park as our "classroom" today to study math, science, history and p.e. Plus, we had a great time learning. You may be wondering how one visit to the park allowed us to study so much. Well, let me explain. We are studying English measurements of length. We took a 12 inch ruler and a yardstick and went on a hunt for items we could measure. Being that it's Autumn, there are leaves of all types on the ground, unless it's an evergreen tree (in comes science and learning about deciduous trees and evergreens). Lucy found different types of leaves and measured them. The smallest she found in the park was 1/4 inches long while the largest leaf was 12 inches long. We recorded the information that we obtained and will make a graph.

P.E. and Math: We played on the basketball court and shot hoops. Each basket we made counted for 2 points. Then we started over and each basket was 3 points, then 4 points each and then 5 points each. This reinforced multiplication and division. She divide the score that we were shooting for and divided it by 2 and found out how many points we each needed to make and then divided that by the point count and figured out how many baskets we each needed to make.

She played on this whirly-twirly thing and made a hypothesis as to whether she would spin faster pushed away from the center or when she moved in closer to the center. She guessed moved into the center. She was right! We then talked about why that is. Just like ice skaters, it is because of angular momentum.
On the playground is a huge "pirate ship" that the kids can climb on on slide down the slides. One of the fears of the earlier explorers, such as Christopher Columbus was pirates. On the "pirate ship" was this sundial. Before clocks, people used the sun to determine the time of day.

Thanks for reading about our educational adventures.