I chaperoned Dylan’s class to the Museum of Art and History this past week. We’d been there on a field trip last year so I was curious to see how this trip would differ from the previous one.
This time, they had the kids separate into 2 groups and within their group, they split off into sub-groups to do collaborative work. In the first group, Dylan was highly sought after by Denisha and Kiara…they had tule as their topic. They were to do their research and then present their findings to the rest of the larger group.
I was very impressed with how much Dylan recalled from their Ohlone unit! And, I could see why the girls wanted him in their group. He was a pretty good presenter!
The second part of the field trip involved getting into sub-groups again, but this time, the little groups had to discover the name, hobbies, gender, and occupation of a Mystery Person via the exploration of historical artifacts–journals, work and school bags, toys, pictures, letters, etc. It was a pretty fun activity! We discovered the Mystery Person was named Edward Prince. He started working at a very young age (14) as a delivery person for a local pharmacy. He later became a pharmacist. He was saving money to buy a Delmar camera and seemed to like to photograph people. He had this cool stereopticon, marbles and roller skates…. His father worked for a lumber mill.
Edward Prince was not a famous guy, but his granddaughter happened to donate his belongings to the museum so folks could learn about how “ordinary” Santa Cruz county folks lived back in the early 1900’s.
The Ohlone made houses, toys, hunting baskets and all sorts of things from tulle. They had to burn down the houses every season because the tulle bred lots of bugs. On the upside, it was waterproof and pretty durable and there was no shortage of it around!
I love these field trips!
