Thursday, May 29, 2008

TRAIN MUSEUM
at Old Sacramento

After the media event -- you know, the one about budget cuts planned for Medi-Cal? the one where Dane jumped up and down behind me to get on camera while NBC was interviewing me? Yeah, that one. Well, after the media event, the kids and I hoofed it over to Old Sacramento again from the Capitol building. There, we stopped for donuts (of course, it's 'tradition' now) and then went to the old school house, and then finally on to the train museum.

I'm not sure the kids grasped the historical reasons behind the train hub there -- how Sacramento started out as a gold boom town, and what the trains meant to travelers crossing the Sierras, and the significant contributions Chinese workers made to the railroad -- but they caught glimpses of all that and sure liked the trains.

They also liked sitting in the theater to watch the train movie.

And crawling under trains. (Probably not supposed to do that.)

In California, state history is studied in fourth grade, so this is where all the fourth graders in northern California end up on a field trip at some point during the school year. There were probably six classes here while we were visiting.

Since we probably won't live here when the kids are in fourth grade, it's probably just as well we took care of this trip in K and 1st. Not sure the history lesson will stick, though. We'll have to save that for Washington's timber museum* or something. (Or Oregon's?)

*Actually, we've been to the Washington State history museum in Tacoma and it encompasses more than timber...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dane & Aubrey, your are fortunate to have a Mom & Dad who take you places to explore and think and learn. Would love a picture and a couple sentences of your time with the trains. Bet I could get that in the mail before we travel on the 10th.
Hope so and thanks in advance.
Lovingly,
Grammy

anjie said...

I can't promise we'll get to that, Grammy...