School Summary - Field Trip to Yorktown in Virginia's Historic Triangle

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A Summary of September 15-19

We took our first week long break from our Sabbath schooling schedule (6ish weeks on, 1 week off), and we sure put our break to good use. We were so thankful to be able travel to Virginia for a week to explore their Historic Triangle: Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown.

Colonial Williamsburg schedules special Homeschool Days each fall and spring and offer extremely discounted rates for homeschoolers as well as extra programs at each location. I'll give you a run down of what we did in case you want to make the trip yourself. My original post was getting way too long so I'll break it down by location. Check out the rest of our trip here and here.

We squeaked in a half day at Yorktown before we left for home. We started with a two-hour guided tour. We started in the museum (no pics allowed) where the students in the group got to try on replicas of the various uniform coats that would have been worn. (Prussian, French, Colonial officer, Colonial militia, enslaved person fighting for the British, British, and free black person fighting for America). After our fashion show, we headed to the plantation.
Yorktown has a demonstration of a middling farm  (middle-class, non-gentry plantation) on site. We toured the farmhouse, the kitchen (a separate building to keep the heat out of the house in the summer), the family garden, an enslaved person's garden, and the tool 'shed'.

Showing the very time intensive process for flax. Farmers would have had five acres of flax to sow, harvest, dry, ripple, ret, grass, scutch, hackle, and finally spin into cloth.

Dried tobacco leaves; The cash crop for Virginia colony

Having the students help act out the tobacco growing/selling/buying/trading process

It's pronounced sal-si-fee, not sal-si-fie. I was disappointed.

The family garden with massive museum construction in the background

Soprano's pic of the farmhouse dining table

Soprano's pic of the farmer's bed. It was very short because they would have slept slightly inclined. They thought it was healthier and would keep them from coughing from any fireplace smoke.

Soprano's pic of the farmhouse kitchen

After we toured the plantation area, we headed to the encampment. We talked about the living conditions.

Showing them how six men would live in one tent and be called a 'mess'. It was funny until the guide had six of us adults squish in there.

Talking about the camp doctor and his possible treatments for ailments. Tenor got to demonstrate how a gunshot would be taken care of.

Our tour finished up and we stayed in the encampment to see the artillery demonstration.

Musket demo

Artillery demo (Tenor got to be part of the bombardier squad)

Artillery demo (Tenor got to be part of the bombardier squad)

At this point, we were famished but we wanted to finish looking around the encampment.

officer's tent

One of Soprano's pics

We headed out to the parking lot for a quick lunch and then returned to watch the movie in the visitor center and tour the gallery. The movie was well done but had one minor cuss word in it, gambling (card playing), and implied violence (It IS about the battle of Yorktown.) But just a warning if those things bother you. After the museum, we hit the gift shop and saw this:

Perfect.

Tips:
*No outside food is allowed but they have a cafe on site.
*Yorktown's website says you only need 2-3 hours which is true, if you don't do a guided tour.
*The tour was included in our Homeschool Days admission price. Totally worth doing, but schedule as soon as you can because dates and times fill up quickly.
*Way less walking than Jamestown and Williamsburg but you'll still want comfy shoes.