Penn Museum

Yesterday we had such a fun day! We went on a little field trip to the Penn Museum with our Rivendell co-op. One family couldn't come, but we still made for a large group--6 adults and 16 kids! This is the same museum that we visited back in June 2009, when we took our weekend trip to Philadelphia and stayed with my college friends. Back in the fall, someone posted a message on a homeschooling email loop that Christine and I are on about this great deal they had seen for the museum--buy 4 tickets for $16! So we all did that, although it seemed like the beginning of March was light-years away when we were planning this trip. I think we were all doubting if it would really work out as the time actually got closer, but we all made it there and had a terrific time. It was a great review for the kids too of all the ancient history we've been studying this year with Tapestry of Grace year 1.
We started out on the 3rd floor with the gallery on Upper Egypt. The mummies were impressive, as always!

Then we moved on to the Asian gallery, where the crystal ball was admired.

In several places, Christine had the 3 Rivendell boys go through the room and pick one thing to explain to the younger kids. Here Nathan is explaining about the lion, which would have guarded a palace or something. The Chinese lions look like dogs because lions aren't native to China, so the artists used dogs as models. I had always wondered about that! Also, this is a male lion because it has a globe under its paw. Female lions are depicted with baby lions under their paw. Interesting!

Here is a group shot taken by a kind passer-by in front of a Japanese Buddhist shrine. I told you we were an impressive group! Buddhists at one point in time underwent a period of persecution in Japan, and so they started making these minature "portable" shrines, of which several were displayed.

We moved on through the Rome and Greece galleries before heading outside to eat our picnic lunches on the benches in front of the museum. The weather was beautiful, praise the Lord, so the kids got to run around this fountain and work off some steam. Then we headed back in and finished up with the Lower Egypt gallery, as well as the American Indian and African galleries, which aren't that big. Here are the 3 Rivendell boys in front of one of the excavated pillars from a palace in Lower Egypt. You can see a doorway in the background.

We were done by 3:30, and we all headed back home, exhausted. The 3 girls fell asleep pretty quickly in the van! All the driving and walking about did me in, and I am still so tired!

We are supposed to go to PA to visit Bob's family next weekend, but this drive has made us have second thoughts. I might be too far along to make another drive--it was so frustrating to have to stop all the time for me to go to the bathroom, and I was so uncomfortable sitting! So we'll see how I am feeling in a few days.