Weekend Recap: Sunday Funday with Hailey's First Grade Class!

For the past three weeks I have been getting "save the date" notices from school about a Sunday class picnic and history tour at Chatham Manor. Number one, I thought it was odd they were doing something on a Sunday at 11:30 am. Number two, I had no clue what a Chatham Manor was. And lastly, when were we going to receive anything more then a save the date notice. Well finally a letter came home this past Thursday giving some small information. Meet at 11:30 at Chatham Manor and bring your family and a picnic lunch. It should last until 2pm and then we are invited to join her for ice cream at this place called Carl's.

To be honest I had no clue what to expect. And since I had nothing for a picnic at the house, I ended up packing some drinks and stopping at WaWa on the way there. The place was amazing! It was absolutely beautiful. We went to a shady spot with benches and ate our lunches and then we began the tour around this huge house. Where we live is heavy in history of the Civil war so this is a house where a lot happened. Now I don't remember all of the information, but it was pretty amazing. We went around the house then got to go inside and tour the little museum part of it. The kids have been learning about this house and a Mr. Lacey who used to own it so they were all amazed. After we finished that we all loaded up in our cars and headed to the "Sunken Road" trail where there were all sorts of battles and then hiked up the hill to the huge Union cemetery. We looked around a little bit and was amazed at the amount of people who had no headstones but just a number marker. These are people who they couldn't account for, This cemetery was HUGE and the dates were all in the 1800's. Afterwards we went to Carl's Ice Cream which I have heard so much about. It's a little outdoor shop that's also a piece of history. It was pretty good! I def would return there! We also showed that we were not from this county by saying we had never been there. Apparently it's a huge deal in these parts!

So the trip was pretty amazing! The more I thought about it, I thought it was pretty cool that Hailey had a teacher who actually loves teaching enough to show them firsthand what they had been learning about in school! Our school budgets have been severely cut so this was a way she could still provide her students a chance to see and learn without bringing in the school and money. She used her own time to make sure they understood what they were learning. I think that's pretty amazing of her. It was a great time and the weather was beautiful. It was a pretty awesome family Sunday!

Part of the Chatham Manor

Shhhh! You don't see Kenny because he may have called out of work so he could join us!

 

This is a crazy tree! It's one of the originals and it has to be supported by these beams to keep it standing!

The supports!

This is what they made their bridges out of so they could cross the water. They were like little pontoon boats

This is the Rappahannock River and across is old town Fredericksburg.

Class picture!

Another one! These are the only kids who came out of 23 total.

These were the gardens at Chatham Manor! They were beautiful!

This was off the Sunken Road trail. Mrs. Scheff is telling the kids about the house that used to be there and that the women who stayed there used to provide water to the soldiers during the war.

This was an original house from the war. There are bullet holes all inside it!

Apparently there are a lot of historical pictures looking up this hill at the house and there are soldiers that have been bandaged up from being wounded hanging out  on that big porch.

This is one tiny view of the cemetery.

 

After we finished with our class activities, I decided it would be an awesome time to go pick some strawberries. Usually we go at the end of the season so this is still pretty early since the berries were pushed back from the harsh weather we had. This is the same place we went last year and I made sure to grab our bucket before leaving the house. We all agreed that we will have to go back in a couple weeks because the berries just weren't ready. They were all very small and it was had to find ones that hadn't rotted from the crazy rains for last week. None of the ones we were able to find were more then one bite and they weren't that sweet either. So I def think a redo is in order in a few weeks! Despite the berries, we did have a pretty fun time!

 

 

 

This place makes fresh honey so this was a bee display that they had that you could look at! Pretty neat!