Homeschool Field Trip: Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial

Bright and early on Father's Day morning, the children and I woke Matt up (some of us by jumping on him as he slept, deeply and unsuspecting of the familiar agony of pouncing little knees and elbows that he was about to endure), gave him presents and cards, and then bundled him up and out the door to parts unknown.

We didn't tell him where we were taking him as we drove him two hours deep into the Indiana wilderness. In fact, we told him that we were taking him to tour a rainbow toilet factory, where we were going to let him pick out the nicest, sparkliest rainbow toilet for his very own--the phenomenon of the rainbow toilet is a family joke of murky provenance. It's best not to inquire too deeply into our collective family psyche.

Finally, just as we were so clearly ensconced into the smack-middle of nowhere that Matt was perhaps starting to believe my jokes that we were maybe planning to dump him by the side of the road and drive away really fast, we reached a place where surely every father in the world super wants to go on his special day:

The Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial.

Oh, wait--that's ME who wanted to go there!

My husband is a very patient, very amiable man.

Back story: as part of our prep for our American Revolution road trip, the kids and I had a lesson on the Lincoln Memorial, because we're driving right through DC so we'll surely stop there and surely see it, so of course we have to study it.

Stay with me here.

As part of that lesson, I learned that the artist who sculpted the Lincoln Memorial had made molds of Lincoln, including a life mask. "Hey!" I thought to myself, "I know where a life mask of Lincoln is!" I used to work at the special collections library on our local university's campus, and I've held that life mask in hands gloved with white cotton more times that I can count. As a matter of fact, that special collections library has quite a large collection of Lincoln artifacts.

Obviously I set up a field trip for our homeschool group to go there and see them.

And also the Oscar:

...and the puzzle collection:

She solved it!

As part of preparing for that field trip, we obviously had to have a lesson just on Lincoln's life, and in preparing for that lesson, I kind of became a little bit obsessed with Lincoln. I blame that on this super good, SUPER dishy biography: Abraham Lincoln: A Life. I dare you to get through the first chapter without needing to read the entire thing.

Seriously, Abraham Lincoln, especially the young Lincoln, is astoundingly fascinating. As a young man, he was apparently known for his dirty jokes and stories. He was even quoted as basically saying, "What's the point of a clean story? BOR-ING!" After his beloved sister died in childbirth, he blamed her husband's entire freaking family for her death, even though they were all like, "Jesus, Lincoln, we took care of her! Shit like this happens all the time!", and he hated that family so much that he actually wrote a homophobic song about one of their cousins.

I'm going to tell you that again.

Lincoln hated some guy so much that he wrote a SONG, a song of SEVERAL VERSES, calling the guy gay. I can only assume that he also sang the song.

How does the song go, you ask? GO. GET. THIS BOOK. There's all kinds of crazy stuff in there.

And that's why I wanted to take myself Matt to the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial for Father's Day. None of them will read the book, so I was dying to march them all around and regale them with the stories that I got from it.

Oh, and I wanted Matt to have a lovely Father's Day with his children, of course!

Pretend that one of them isn't frowning. I took a dozen photos here, and this is the best. She's not even actively snarling in this one. Trust me--she was for sure snarling in the next one!

 

The kids and I had already seen some examples of Lincoln's handwriting during our homeschool field trip to the special collections library, but I can always fangirl over one more:

When you read Lincoln's handwriting, a fun game is to look for misspellings, because he wasn't a reliable speller.

 

This, however, is the first example that we'd seen of the handiwork of Abraham's father, Thomas Lincoln:

I thought it looked pretty sweet, but in The Book Thomas Lincoln is reviled as a lazy-ass deadbeat who was a terrible father, and who neglected and abused his children. Also, the book said that he wasn't a great carpenter--sure, he could make your basic stuff, like this giant chest, apparently, but none of the neighbors would use him for anything that they wanted to be especially nice.

He was also a lazy farmer; he'd stake a big claim like all the neighbors, but whereas everyone else farmed above their needs so that they could turn a profit and, you know, BETTER THEIR LIVES, Thomas Lincoln apparently farmed at almost a subsistence level. That's one of the reasons why the family moved around so much--a bad couple of years can really wipe you out when you have no savings.

Also, ALSO?!? When we were watching the memorial's introductory film, and Leonard Nimoy, the film's narrator, stated that both Abraham Lincoln's father and mother encouraged his educational pursuits, I gasped aloud in outrage. Thomas Lincoln most certainly did NOT encourage Abraham's educational pursuits! Why, whenever he'd catch him sitting and reading, he'd chew him out, hit him, and basically try to make him feel like a lazy piece of shit for studying instead of chopping wood. Abraham's step-mother actually had to sneak him books! And that thing about Abraham "leaving school" at a young age?!? That's because Thomas MADE him leave school! He made him drop out and began to rent him out as a day laborer for all kinds of work--chopping wood, farmwork, slaughtering pigs--and he took ALL of Abraham's earnings. Abraham even approached a family friend once and asked for help in running away, because he wasn't legally allowed to leave his family until he was 21. The friend told him it would be better to just stick it out. You might have seen a quote that Lincoln said later in his life--when someone was asking him about slavery, he said something like, "Yeah, I was a slave for a while." That time in his life is what he was talking about, and his words were pretty accurate.

Don't worry, though--I shared this information with the rest of the family in a furious hiss as they were trying to watch the movie.

They are very patient with me, even if some of them are much more interested in giant fireplaces:

It's a short hike from the memorial and museum to the grave of Abraham's biological mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln:

I don't know why I am always forcing my family to pose with graves, but I am:

The kids were completely fascinated with the story of Nancy Lincoln's death from white snakeroot poisoning, and we had an interesting discussion about pasteurization, dairy farming, and the time that I sent Matt to buy us some raw milk at the farmer's market and he came back, looked at the bottle, and then said, "Hey! I just wasted my money! This says that it's pet food!"

And then we discussed what a legislative loophole is!

One of the reasons why I was so excited to go to the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial is that it has a living history farm on site, complete with animals, crops, and rangers in period dress:

On the walk there, you pass by the bronzed footprint of the original Lincoln cabin:

After Thomas Lincoln married Sarah Bush Johnston (leaving Abe and his older sister, Sarah, in the company of a slightly older cousin for several months. By the time he returned, the children had assumed he'd died, and they had nearly starved and had hardly any clothes), there were eight people living within this footprint:

 Husband and wife and two daughters slept on the ground floor, and all the boys slept up in the attic:

There was apparently room underneath for the chickens:

The older kid loved these chickens so much that when I suggested that she go ask the ranger what breed they were, she happily complied. They are Wyandottes, and I want some!

 

We spent most of the day hiking around and looking at stuff--

--and then the children joined a certain elite group that they dearly love--

--and we drove back home through the wilderness.

During our ten minutes of daily memory work in the car, I've slowly been working with the kids on memorizing the Gettysburg Address (the older kid had it memorized a few years ago, but lost it. This doesn't bother me, because I know that it'll be easier to re-memorize this time thanks to that). We're only three sentences in, but in this gift shop, I noticed bookmarks with the Gettysburg Address printed on them for sale. I bought one for each of the kids, then surprised them with them in the car and told them that when each kid had memorized the entire speech, she'd earn herself ten dollars.

They happily repeated the Gettysburg Address over and over to themselves the whole way home.

Here are some of the Abraham Lincoln resources that we (mostly me!) enjoyed during this study of his life and times:

Tippecanoe, and Us, Too! A Visit to Tippecanoe Battlefield

Have I ever told you what a major Tecumseh fangirl I am?

My entry point was this historical novel written by a local author, and now I'm hooked. I lived right across the Arkansas River from Oklahoma growing up, so the government's attempted genocide of the native peoples of these areas has long interested me, and the kids' pioneer study has been a terrific excuse to deep dive into this particular episode and this particular national hero.

For a period of his life, after the government kicked him out of his homeland in Ohio, Tecumseh actually lived here in Indiana. He and his brother and sister established a sort of multi-national city up north, by the Tippecanoe river, where nations could come together as they worked toward their mutual goal, and Tecumseh's dream, of a united Native American people who would no longer get snowed under by the government, or incited, or turned against each other, or just plain victimized.

Unfortunately, the Prophet, Tecumseh's brother and the religious head of the movement, was... unreliable. Tecumseh, who really was building momentum on their cause, needed to take a recruiting trip to visit the nations who still "owned" land in the eyes of the government, to convince them to join with his cause and not fall prey to the government's same tricks. William Henry Harrison, however, who was a giant asshole, was just slobbering with desire to somehow kick the Native Americans off of the little land they held in Indiana, to run them off or perhaps incite them to break their treaty, and thereby open that land to settlement and eventual statehood. Tecumseh knew this, and so he told the Prophet not to engage Harrison; if Harrison actually engaged him, he should marshal their people and flee, but if Harrison did not actually engage him, he was to keep the peace.

Harrison knew Tecumseh had gone, and so he deliberately led his army to a spot that was right exactly next to Prophetstown. The people of Prophetstown, including kids, the elderly, the women who were taking care of both, and all their food and supplies for the winter, freaked out. Some begged the Prophet to engage Harrison and drive him away, and some begged the Prophet to listen to Tecumseh and keep the peace. Being insane, the Prophet decided to not only engage Harrison's army, but also to tell his people that he'd had a vision and that the army's bullets would not be able to harm them. He wanted the warriors to assassinate Harrison, thinking that, I don't know, if they assassinated Harrison the whole mess would just go away?

They chose to attack early in the morning, thinking that the soldiers would still be sleeping. They weren't. Their belief that bullets wouldn't harm them meant that they were unprepared to actually be shot, and when a watchman did happen to think that he noticed a movement and to shoot at it by chance, the warrior who was hit didn't take the injury stoically, but cried out in surprise, and so the battle began ignominiously.

Harrison wasn't assassinated, because he mounted the wrong horse and the warriors weren't able to pick him out of the crowd. The demoralized Native Americans were defeated after a couple of hours of fighting, and the survivors had to help the people of Prophetstown flee north with no preparation and no warning, leaving behind all of their food and supplies, which the soldiers then destroyed. The soldiers defiled the bodies of the dead, and even dug up old graves to defile those bodies, too.

Tecumseh didn't make it back to Prophetstown for another three months, and what he saw when he did return was a long-abandoned wasteland that used to be his village. His people had mostly starved that winter, and most had left his cause. Most of his new recruits also abandoned the cause when they heard of the tragedy. As a final, desperate maneuver, Tecumseh allied with the British, whom he believed would at least be more generous, and less duplicitous, in their treaty-making than the Americans had been, if he helped them win the War of 1812. But the Americans killed Tecumseh in battle, and finally defeated once and for all, the Native Americans were truly at the government's mercy and had to take whatever pittances and poor allowances that they were reluctantly given.

William Henry Harrison remained a huge asshole. He made a successful run for president on the back of this battle ("Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too," you know), and I am not sad to tell you that he gave a super-long asshole Inaugural Address, caught pneumonia, and died a month later, and John Tyler had to follow on in the rest of his term.

On the weekend after the anniversary of the battle (which took place on November 7, 1811, the kids can now tell you) and before Veterans' Day, we spent the morning at Tippecanoe Battlefield, and it was freaking AWESOME, just as super cool as I'd been hoping.

First of all, the museum was free on account of the festivities, so score!

These are all the Indiana counties named after officers participating in this battle.

There were plenty of veterans there for me to do the "thank you for your service" thing and stand around and gossip with (I am excellent with the elderly, and there is always something to gossip about. This one dude and I speculated wildly about the Lauren Spierer case, and then it turned out that he used to be a police chief so he regaled me with loads of super-scary SVU cases that had occurred during his time and loads of super-scary details of those cases. Probably not the best thing to talk about in a museum gift shop...). There was an excellent lecture about the battle, four-fifths of the audience of which were members of my family (we totally owned that lecture, by the way. The docent holds up a picture and asks, "Who is this man?" "The Prophet!!!" both of my children shout. The docent asks, "Does anyone have any questions?" We do). AND there were re-enactors from World War II--

"Oh, my gosh! Are you Ernie Pyle?!?" I squealed. He replied, "No, but he's a friend of mine."

--the Revolutionary War (I made him tell me about the standardization of rifles. It was wonderful), and the Civil War:

Yes, I did bring up battlefield first aid AGAIN, but this time nobody fainted. I also demanded a detailed explanation of how the rifles worked and got a lead bullet to pass around.

The best part, though, was that of course there was the battlefield to explore: 

This monument stands at the site of Harrison's tent.

Harrison. Blech.

Many of these trees date from a hundred years prior to the battle.

  

These fences mark the border of the battlefield.

You can see Prophetstown State Park from here. THAT'S how close Harrison was.

The children are demonstrating Tecumseh's bundle of twigs metaphor.

The younger kid does NOT like not being able to do something, so she about gave herself an aneurysm trying to break this bundle. Nevertheless, Tecumseh prevailed!

 Since Tecumseh didn't actually participate in the battle, I was actually even more excited, if that is possible, to visit Prophetstown State Park. I wanted to curl up in a fetal position and get emotional on the ground where Tecumseh had once walked, don't you know?

Unfortunately, Prophetstown State Park SUCKED.

The good news is that the gate fee was waived for the weekend. The bad news is that the park was basically vacant. No rangers. No docents. No real signage to point to where the village of Prophetstown had once stood (We saw a sign that read "Native American Village," but it pointed to a highway that you couldn't access by car from inside the park. Apparently you either have to cross that highway on foot or enter the parking lot of the living history farm, which has a separate entrance fee). Also, the VISITOR CENTER was closed. CLOSED!!! The sign said that apparently it's closed on weekends? When, you know, people are mostly going to visit? Especially the weekend nearest the anniversary of the battle?

Ugh.

We basically drove around, confused, and then in desperation I had Matt take our picture by a flagpole near the visitor center, just in case it was an important spot.

It wasn't.

So technically, I guess I probably stood and walked *somewhere* where Tecumseh stood and walked. I mean, he probably hiked that area where the battleground was. He probably stood right there on that spot where that flagpole would someday be, even if it wasn't actually in his village. Just keep telling me that, so I won't cry.

This part of history is so interesting to me because it's seemingly such a small thing, this one small battle, and yet it changed the entire face of the country. If the Prophet had obeyed Tecumseh, would Tecumseh have succeeded in uniting the Native American nations? Would they then have had the influence to make and enforce fair treaties with the American government?

Would Indiana be a state, or would it be a nation?

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Homeschool Field Trip: Conner Prairie

Living history museums are WAY more fun now that my children will consent to speak to other humans. Now they love the play-acting and joining into the spirit of the conceit that's required for one to really experience what a living history museum can offer, and they had a fabulous day at Conner Prairie.

I was the most excited for the children to experience Prairie Town, a recreation of an 1836 small Indiana town, because I considered it the culmination of our pioneer unit study. The kids had worked hard learning about Western Expansion and pioneer life, and thus had the context to make their experience here even more fun. Seriously, they inspected this covered wagon like the trail-hardened wagon engineers that they are:

I took them by the Outfitters Cart to choose a profession--Cook--and it was the best thing that we could possibly have done there, especially as our first stop. Many of the tasks that the profession card held required the kids to engage with the actors, which got them comfortable with doing so and for the rest of the day, they were able to run right up to anyone in period dress and jump right in with questions or thoughts or "help" with whatever that actor was doing:

Even though it was actively raining, like, right then, this gardener was still grateful to have some help at the pump!

carding wool for the hotel owner

and helping her spin some wool

The Cook card also required the kids to practice close observation--they had to find things in the kitchens like this book of recipes--

 --and the prices for various staple goods, including salt, sugar, and baking soda:

Note that this sign doesn't have "baking soda" on it. Can YOU find it?

I also required the kids to ask one "good" question every place we went, and this led to them learning interesting facts such as where the salt is stored, why the doctor's wife doesn't have a butter churn (the doctor gets paid in so much barter that they don't need to keep their own animals), and how much a tin cup costs at the trading post (the trader said that if the younger kid brought him a raccoon skin, he'd give her TWO tin cups!).

The only place that really disappointed me was the Lenape Indian Camp. There was a wetu and a skin drying and a bark boat--

--and a couple of children's games set out, but there were no Lenape. Instead, there was the trading post and another settler-type house, and when the younger kid asked, the trader's wife said that the place was a "trading camp"--not even a real Native American town, then! NOT a good representation of Native American life, especially considering that Indiana has a rich Native American history, some of which we actually do know.

Oh, well. We'll be visiting Prophetstown and Battle Ground later this year, and I can do my own fangirly historical interpretation there myself, if I need to. 

One of the things that I had to continually encourage the kids to do, even after all their practice at Prairetown, was to ask the actors and other historical interpreters their questions. The younger kid would absolutely pepper me with questions, but when I would tell her to ask this or that person instead, she'd be reluctant. The older kid would also have questions, but would then immediately come up with her own guesses at the answers, and be satisfied with that. I absolutely required them, however, if there was a docent in sight, to refer their question to that person, and thankfully, every single docent was always interesting and engaging, and always had an answer (that was always different from the older kid's guesses!). 

The kids have been interested in pottery ever since the younger kid's work on her Girl Scout Brownie Potter badge, and I've been toying with the idea of what at-home pottery we can do (pottery studio memberships aren't super pricey here, honestly, but the kids' classes always overlap extracurriculars that my kids are already involved in). I don't think that we could recreate THIS kiln, necessarily--

 --but this potter--

--was making some pretty great things on a kick wheel just like this one!

There was also map reading--

--and chicken observation-- 

--and over lunch a Come to Jesus entitled "If You Continue to Pitch This Fit, I Will Leave Your Sister with One of My Friends and Drive You Home and You Will Reimburse Me $5 for Your Admission to This Place," inspired by the fact that the older kid had packed only a ton of yogurt and fruit for her own lunch (and no spoon), and couldn't stand the fact that the younger kid had packed a giant, carefully-prepared lunch for herself. The younger kid even let her borrow her plastic spoon when I asked her to, before she'd even used it herself for her own yogurt, so the older kid ate her own yogurt with the spoon, and then THREW THE SPOON AWAY. The younger kid had to spoon up her yogurt with the lid, getting it all over herself in the process, but don't worry--the older kid had ALSO THROWN AWAY THE LAST WET WIPE. 

Lunch was followed by Go Play on the Playground and Don't Talk to Me for a While. Everyone cheered up at the tour of the historical home and garden, however-- 

--and the older kid redeemed herself by asking a million nerdy questions of the weaver, and chasing squirrels out by the cornfield and making her sister laugh.

It was almost the end of the day by the time we reached the Civil War--

--but the kids still got to muster, and witness an encounter between Confederate soldiers and some townspeople, and then we wandered into the field hospital.

It was just the three of us in the field hospital, along with the field medic, but he was stoked to set up shop and show us all of his tools and how he used them. Using the younger kid as his model, he described in great detail what a gunshot to the arm would look like--what it would tear, what it would shatter, how much blood would be spilled, what the level of pain would look like. He pulled out each tool that would be used and explained exactly what each one would do--this one to hold the skin flaps open, this one to clamp onto the lead bullet, this one to cut away excess tissue. He was just describing how the surgeons would simply wipe off the saw before using it to sever another limb, when the younger kid suddenly began to make this loud, high-pitched whining noise. We both turned to look at her, the field medic still holding her arm, just as she started to stagger in his grasp and fall over.

"Oh, no!" I said. "She's going to faint! Is there somewhere she can sit?" The field medic ran outside, where there were a couple of Union soldiers killing time on the porch, and got them to drag a chair up to the porch, which I hauled the younger kid over to and sat her on. One of the soldiers then went inside to grab some of the field bandages to make a cold, wet compress for the younger kid's forehead, while I made her put her head between her knees and the poor field medic just kept apologizing to her, over and over, pausing only to declare that this had never happened to him before.

While the rest of us were distracted with the younger kid, the second Union soldier turned to the older kid, who was just standing there, and asked her, "Are YOU okay?"

"No," I heard her say, and then she started to fall over, too! I ditched the younger kid with the field medic (still patting her and apologizing), and the second Union soldier and I sort of dragged the older kid over to a grassy area next to the porch. I laid her down on the grass, and she immediately rolled over onto her face and just lay there, moaning.

The first Union soldier then reappeared, dripping wet linen bandages in his hands, observed the scene, and said, "NOW what happened?" We were all like, "Ummm... I don't know?" so he said, "Right, I'm calling the medic."

The younger kid was still woozy, so the field medic and the second Union soldier brought her over to the grass, too, and then I found myself, standing on a lawn, my two kids lying moaning at my feet, three grown men in Civil War garb standing facing me, looking absolutely horrified.

Thankfully, it took just a couple of minutes for the medic--the REAL medic--to roll up in his cart. He stepped out, asked what happened, and then the poor field medic started right in about how he was just demonstrating field surgery, and they were really interested, and this had never happened to him before, and so the medic cut him off with "What did you DO to them?"

I explained that the kids both just suddenly felt faint, and the medic, who'd clearly seemed to be expecting chloroform poisoning or something, relaxed into taking the kids' vitals and getting them to sit up, etc.

The younger kid's check was normal and she was feeling a little better, so I left her in the care of the first Union soldier while the second Union soldier and I helped the medic examine the older kid. She wasn't feeling well, of course, and strangers were looking at her and talking to her, which she does NOT like, and even though we were pretty isolated where we were, she knew for a fact that many of her friends were also at Conner Prairie that day, and who knew but that they might also be looking at her. Ten-year-old's worst nightmare, right? So let's just say that she was being... combative. The medic asked her if she was okay.

"NO!" she said.

"Okay, then how do you feel?"

"BORED!" she said.

"Can I check your pulse?"

"NO!" she said.

"What's your name?"

"NO!"

The medic looked up at me in concern, and I know he was thinking that she had an altered mental state, but he asked me, "This is unusual for her, right?"

And I said, "Well...". I didn't really know how to respond, actually. Does my kid *usually* act like an asshole? Mostly not. Is acting like an asshole totally out of character for her? No. Could she be acting like an asshole for absolutely no medical reason right now? Probably, but who wants to admit to a medical professional that their kid is simply just acting like an asshole? Finally, I said, "I think that she's, um, angry right now. This isn't the ideal way she wanted to spend her time in Civil War Town."

Fortunately, her vitals read as okay. No neuro consult needed!

Meanwhile, I could half hear the younger kid having a lovely moment with the first Union soldier. He shared with her his REAL NAME. Wonderful guy.

The medic told the kids that they needed to drink a big glass of water, eat a big dinner, and go to bed early that night, and then he offered us a ride anywhere we wanted to go. It was almost closing time, though, so I asked if he could just take us to our car.

Reader, he could.

The Union soldiers helped get us settled into the medic's buggy, the field medic came over one more time to hug each of the children and tell them that he was sorry (Geez, poor guy!), and then as we motored off, they all waved and hollered "Bye!" at us.

The kids did, indeed drink a ton more water on the way home, they did, indeed eat a big dinner, and you can bet that I did, indeed send them to bed early that night.

Later, as Matt and I hung out and ate our own dinners and watched a movie, I like to think that the field medic and I, cities apart as we were, were both self-medicating ourselves with much hard cider in solidarity from our afternoon.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!