The Scrapbook (from 2005)

TimeTravelers and My Son
Written March, 2006

Several years ago, I started working on genealogy for a college history paper and found that although I had lived in Virginia for well over 20 years I knew very little about Virginia history, US History, and World History. My son, Brandon, was born December 2002 and at that time I decided that he would know and enjoy history more than I did growing up. I looked around and started going places with him and Jenny and Sarah.  Jenny was born in Scotland and raised in England. Sarah is her 8 year old daughter.

We took the kids everywhere. One day I was searching for family history stuff and I came across the website for Time Travelers, this was in 2004. In 2005, we decided to participate in Time Travelers. Jenny puts a great spin and different outlook on things that we see and do. Brandon is now 3 1/2 and we have already gone to our first destination for 2006. You may be wondering what kinds of things a 2 year old can be doing and learning, here are just a few of the things we did last year and what he is picking up and learning.

Chippokes Farm and Forestry Museum. He got to sit on "tractors through the years." All kinds of tractors. He saw farm equipment, he just knows it as things we use to work on the farm. He knows about the farm because of relatives that live on farms and also while at Chippokes in Surry, there is a Pick Your Own Strawberry Farm over there.

Eastern Shore of Virginia Barrier Island Center and National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge has a wonderful hands-on exhibit of different animals, sea and land, that the kids can touch and feel. When you go outside to the actual refuge it is all of this wildlife and the kids can run and play but then we look at the flowers and butterflies (a lot of butterflies) and talk about the different kinds of each, be it color or size.

Jamestown Settlement and Jamestowne, Historic. Two different places and they both have some hands-on stuff but the Settlement has the reenactments. For my son that is the best. He always wants to see the "Indians" and the "ships". Last year at the settlement, they had a program called Military through the Ages which showed many different militarys from the Renaissance to present day military and several different countries. At the age of 2 1/2, Brandon was part of the children's parade and got to carry a gun and present one of the reenactment camps with their participation ribbon.

Civil War Visitor Center at Tredegar Iron Works. The four of us went here when we got lost one day. It was the first time I had seen a water mill and we also got to climb on a train.

This is just a few of the things we did last year.  That is 8 different sites and we spent all day at each of them, went back to some of them, all for the price of one outing to Busch Gardens. My son thinks we are "investigating" (thanks to the cartoons for teaching him that word) and loves the soldiers, Indians, ships, farm stuff, George Washington, and so much other stuff.