Day 5 - Shirley Plantation

Many of the different places we visited on our Virginia vacation I knew about before, or had found through the Virginia State website.  However, I had never heard of Shirley Plantation, and wouldn't have, if I hadn't stumbled upon this gem of a site: Virginia Beach Family Fun

When I first read about Shirley Plantation, I thought it sounded interesting, but wasn't sure if it would be interesting enough to warrant a visit for our family.  After all, we have 4 young kids.  They do love history, but how interesting could touring a house be for little ones?  But after a little investigating, I discovered that our vacation coincided with Shirley Plantation's Homeschool Days!!  And what better way for homeschoolers to spend their vacation than learning with other homeschoolers!? 

Shirley Plantation

Even though I had done my research, and knew there would be lots of different hands on activities to do throughout the day, I had missed the bonus about admission prices!  We knew that anyone under 6 years old was free, but we had planned on paying $11 per adult and 7.50 for our only child over 6 at the time - Nathaniel.  What we didn't know was that homeschool days had a special homeschoolers price!  Children over 6 were now $8.50, but the adults were FREE!  We had planned on spending around $30 for the day, and instead spent less than $10!!! (I've seen on the website that they raised the price since then, having the price be $7.50 for adults and children alike, but under 6 is still free - a good deal either way!)

We had to set up a time to tour the main house when we bought our admission tickets.  There weren't many people around so we decided on the first tour of the day.  That way, there wouldn't be many families on the tour with us. 

Waiting to tour the main house

There were no pictures allowed in the house tour, so I can't show you all the pretty things in the house, but I can tell you that we had a good time!  The man who led our tour was GREAT with our kids, and he was very good about getting them involved and drawing them into the history of the house.  We toured the house because Ken was very interested, but we were pleasantly surprised at how interested the kids were too!  They enjoyed learning about how the house was saved from being burned during the Civil War, who lived in the house throughout the years and Ken loved the architecture of the house - especially the flying staircase.  The staircase is one of a kind in the US.  I missed out on some of the tour because Felix became a bit fussy.  I stepped out of the room so others could enjoy the tour without being distracted by a fussy baby.

 After the tour of the house and a quick roam over to the root cellar, we headed over to the school room to participate in the activities over there.  There were many different stations set up in the school room.  We decided to learn about the plants and wildlife around Shirley plantation first.  There were sheets to color that you could cut and staple into a book.  The kids enjoyed this, but what kid doesn't love coloring and making books?

In the schoolroom

Learning about the plants and wildlife

While the younger kids worked on making a water colored butterfly ...

Working on her butterfly

Beautiful A-symmetrical butterfly!

Nathaniel learned to write with a quill pen!

demonstration on how to use a quill pen

While Ainsley and Ephraim moved onto making flowers, Felix, Nathaniel and Kan tried their hand at some old fashioned fun!

working on her flower

It's just as pretty as she is!

Anyone for a game of pickup sticks?

Fine, I'll play be myself

We've moved on to dominoes now!

A father son game of pickup sticks

Ainsley was too young to try the ink and quill pen, so she did a lesson of copywork on a slate.

Copywork on a slate

After we had done every activity thrown our way in the schoolroom (and loving every second of it!) we made our way outside to visit the Chicken Whisperer, or as my kids call her - The Chicken Lady.  The kids loved this station as well!  It was a talk about the different types of chickens, the eggs they lay, predators to the chickens, and they even got to pet and hold a chicken.  Even though we live out in the middle of farm land, we do not currently own chickens, nor do we interact with them, so this was a special treat to the kids!

Petting a chicken

Holding a chicken for the first time

After learning about chickens, we stopped by to visit with the goats.

Hello goats!

By now we were getting hungry, so we took our picnic lunch to a picnic area they had set up in the shade of some trees and enjoyed some lunch and an impromptu nature study lesson on the strawberry.

Juicy red strawberries with lunch

Inspecting the strawberry seeds with a magnifying glass

After lunch, we headed over to the "block building" station.  Here we learned all about the different patterns you could make with bricks, which pattern was the strongest or weakest, and tried to identify what patterns were used on the buildings on the property.  We even got to make our own brick wall, with real bricks!

Building a brick wall

Papa gets in on the fun

Then we played a popular game of old called lawn bowling.  It was tons of fun!!

Lawn Bowling

After that, we went over to another building to learn about the restoration that was happening in the area.  Most of it was geared towards the adults, but there was a small sand box for the kids to play in.  It gave them a hands on feel for how the excavation process worked.

learning about excavation and restoration

We wandered down to the river and watched some birds for a while before we took the hour drive back to Chippokes.  We had a GREAT time here, and were so glad that we were here for homeschool days!

Next up: Jamestown and Yorktown