My Raleigh County Adventure, Part 4: Children's Youth Museum and Mountain Homestead!

Boys and girls, I will try to to make this post as quick as possible. I have a very busy week coming up, for I am going with Mrs. Sponaugle to SPACE CAMP! It is located in Huntsville, Alabama. I am so very excited to learn about ways to explore our solar system with the other state teachers of the year, but first I must wrap up telling you about my West Virginia adventures.

After I visited the coal mine town, Mrs. Sponaugle and I paid a quick visit to the Children's Youth Museum! This is a very fun place where you can learn about managing money - in a very hands on way! There were many fun games inside to learn about the stock market, different forms of money throughout history, and starting your own business! I had never been in a museum quite like this!

Ready to go inside!

The Peace Totem outside the museum

What a fun place!

Could you balance a budget?

Setting up a lemonade stand!

Different forms of money throughout history!

I hope that's not bear fur!

Do you help your parents weigh produce
at the grocery store?

Well, after that, I thought our adventures were finished and we could head home to Martinsburg. We walked out the back doors of the Youth Museum...into another time period! There is a little log cabin village, Mountain Homestead, set up behind the Youth Museum to teach children about homestead living in the early 1800's. What is a homestead, you ask? Well, that was a special adventure where pioneers decided to leave their towns and settle land in the mountains or prairie. They wanted to have more land and freedom to start their own towns away from where they lived. It wasn't easy living far away from town, but that is how much of the United States came to be settled.

There was a little log cabin...just the right size for me!

A view of the store 

Inside the village store

Another view - you could play checkers inside! Sometimes,
the village store was a great place to catch up with the other
pioneers.

Where's Berkeley?

A Family Home!

Another outhouse...I did not pose with this one!

Inside the family home...the fireplace would be the only
way to stay warm in the winter!

You would have to weave your own blankets and make your
own clothes on a homestead!

This ladder takes you up to a loft, where you would sleep at night.
Can you see the bed post? 

I wonder what is inside?

Oh! This is where they would make harnesses and yokes for the farm
animals! 

Wow, look at all the tools! It must take a lot of skill to make
everything by hand!

I bet this is where they fired iron, to make things
like horseshoes!

And last but not least...of course you would have to go to school
if you were a child on a homestead!

Not very many books...

Homestead schools were only open a few months a year, because
children were needed to work on the farm. You would have to recite
your lessons in class, while the other students were practicing theirs
out loud as well. Those benches and tables don't look very
comfortable to sit at all day.

Wow - what an exciting day! It has taken me a few weeks to tell you about my last travels of the school year, but luckily I finished just in time to be ready for Space Camp! I will have many pictures of that journey in the next few weeks to share with you! Until, please continue to enjoy your summer vacation! Can you believe in almost one month...it will be time to go back to school?!?!

Until next time...