For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery
Galatians 5:1
Being a family of five means small day trips can still get a little pricey for us, so we are always on the lookout for low cost trips with our kids where they will have fun and learn. Since we don’t want to travel far (to avoid having to stay in a hotel or rental) it limits a lot of options for us. We are fortunate that there are some awesome places near us in South Central Kentucky where we can have fun field trips that can be cost efficient for a family of five. So a couple weeks ago we went to the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace, it was completely free and our kids had a blast.
The first thing we did was go through the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace visitor center which is right up front when you get to the park. A plus for our field trip was they gave the kids Junior Ranger packets, where they had to fill out so many pages of the packet (according to their age) to get a Junior Ranger Badge. This means they had to actually pay attention to things to answer the questions in their books. Yes we had to help our younger two but knowing that they had more educational stuff for the kids to do was a plus for us. The kids loved watching the video of his life as he was growing up and seeing how life was when Abraham Lincoln was a child, and they got to see the connection to their own lives and how even though he lived many years ago he was still a Kentucky kid living and working on is family farm just like they do. They even had a little room where the kids could play with Lincoln logs and a couple toys that Abraham Lincoln would have had when he was younger.
They earned their Junior Ranger Badges!! They were so proud of themselves!
The next part was the climb up the steps to Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace. It was really cool that they had fifty-six steps that led up to the birthplace, they represented every year of Abraham Lincolns’s life and my husband stopped on the fifty-second step so our kids could see where he was in his life when he became the President of the United states. But the kids really liked seeing the little house Abraham Lincoln lived in, they were just amazed at how little it was when compared to what we see and live in today.
The last part of our trip was going down to the sinking spring. This spring was down a small hill from Abraham Lincolns house, and they learned that this is where Abraham Lincoln had to go everyday, multiple times a day, to get water for his family to drink, cook with, take baths. The were just amazed at how they used to get water and they didn’t have running water in their house. They said “that’s a lot of trips to just get water and that he would have to walk down a hill to get it”. I don’t believe he would have minded it too bad in the heat of the summer though because it felt like an air conditioner due to it being down in the mouth of a cave.
I would have to say this is a great field trip for kids because of the history they will learn here. Our kids still talk about this field trip and they talked about how Abraham Lincoln is on the penny and how much a penny is. So there was history, money, and math learned that day without even getting a book, paper or pencil out. We have more trips planned for this year and we are so excited about them. Homeschooling does not have to be expensive, just know what you can use and what is around you!