The high desert museum contains displays of animals, plants, native American artifacts, mock ups of mining towns and homesteads. We have been once before, in May, but the boys asked if we could go again. This time they raced through the exhibition on plains Indians, the stopped by the small black and white tv in the mock-up of a house on a reservation and watched the Lone Ranger for about 20 minutes (they believe they are starved of television time).
Following that we went up to the homestead that has been set up outside, complete with a family home, stable, hired hand house, saw mill, stables, vegetable patch, hen house, cold store. There were two actors dressed up as the owner and hired hand from 1904. The boys took to life in the early 1900s with a passion. They dug in the vegetable patch, collected eggs, chased chickens, fed horses, played with a wooden hoop, learned how the steam powered lumber mill worked, and then started telling all the other visitors about the place. They told the actor about the visit to Shaniko several days previously and he talked about his visits to the town in 1904 and how it was so important, all the brand new buildings - it fitted in so well with that visit. All in all we stayed at the homestead for over 2 hours, while many other visitors came and went.
I really believe that time is one of the best gifts that I can give to my children in our unschooling journey. They were interested in this (all 3 of them in different aspects of it) and had the time to find out more than most people passing through.
The following day two of the boys were outside and came in periodically with status updates. "Philips has done his 20s", "I have done my 30s", etc. We didn't enquire what that meant, but just said "great, carry on". In the car later Philip said "20, 40, 60, 80, 100". Clearly he is counting by 20s, and probably worked out 30s and 40s too.
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