The World Is Our Classroom: DC: Day One, Pt. 1

The hotel we stayed at was a dump. It was neither nice nor particularly clean. But it was cheap, it was not a roach motel (and no bedbugs!), it offered free continental breakfast, it was very conveniently located near a major Metro hub in Arlington, and--best of all--it offered hourly shuttle service to and from that hub. So, all things considered, I might still recommend it to any homeschool family heading to D.C.

There were so many things I wanted to do and see in our nation's capitol, and I knew there was no way we would get to do it all, but by golly, I was going to die trying! ; ) Good thing my kids are troopers--the next morning I was waking them at the crack of dawn so we could catch the 7 a.m. shuttle to the city. I had carefully grouped the things we wanted to see by proximity, to save time between things, and I had planned our route for the day to maximize what we could see before 5-5:30, when all the museums and government buildings close.

So our first stop of the day--The White House!

When I started planning the trip as far as I could find out the WH was not open for tours, so I did not take effort to make that happen. But the day we were around the WH I saw people lined up for tours, although not nearly as many as I would have expected, so maybe just private tours? Not sure about the official status of that. But that was ok with me--while it would have been great to see the inside and take the tour, the kids were fine with just seeing the outside, and we sure had fun doing it, our first iconic building in D.C!

[And let me stop and take a moment right now to explain something important to all my fellow homeschool moms reading--this was not my ideal trip. I did not get the days I would have wanted, and even with all my research and planning we missed some opportunities we didn't know we could have had. There were things that, when I started planning this trip 6 months ago, I thought OF COURSE we HAD to do--like visiting the W.H. or sitting in on a session of Congress. But, life. So when I actually knew what days we would be there, I had to quickly throw out a lot of my preconceived ideas about what our visit to D.C. "SHOULD" look like. And I realized, I don't really care about doing some of the things a homeschool family "SHOULD" do in D.C. My kids don't care. And, frankly, I didn't really want to lock in too many tours to our schedule, because formal tours take precious time. I wanted our time to be spent seeing the things I most wanted to show the kids, doing the things I most wanted to experience with the kids, or letting them choose what they most wanted to see and do. And those things might not be the things everyone else thinks they should be. And that's ok.

That is all to say--don't judge me. : ) ]

As we walked around the "block" going to see the other famous side of the White House, it was so cool to see other iconic landmarks greeting us from between buildings!

And there's a neat sidewalk "walk of fame" of influential people on one side of the WH--I don't even think those featured were all American, but I could be wrong. If I had known about this beforehand we could have researched it a bit, and maybe looked for certain figures. Oh well--next trip! ; )

Next official stop: the White House Visitor Center, which opened at 7:30 in the morning. It was more than a welcome bathroom break--it was a lovely building with really cool museum displays about the White House. We could have spent more time there!

Next stop: Ford's Theater.

Just as with the White House Visitor Center, I wasn't expecting there to be a full-blown Abraham Lincoln museum there! So by now we were a little behind schedule, but we just couldn't rush through--so much neat history on display!

One favorite item on display--this quilt, made as a fund-raiser.

Ulysses S. Grant

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Lincoln also has a lot of excellent quotations to collect.

I was surprised to see a story like this documented. But of course I greatly appreciated it.

After seeing the inside of the box, we got to sit for a few minutes in the theater and watch as the stage was being set for a new show getting ready to open. A behind-the-scenes look at a working theater!

After seeing the theater, we went across the street to the house where Lincoln was taken after he was shot, the house where he was treated but finally died. Little did I know this unassuming building houses another whole museum--this one picking up the story where the Ford's Theater museum left off, telling about the whole assassination conspiracy (did you know Lincoln was not the only target? I didn't!), the hunt for Booth, and the trials of the conspirators.