Mansion Tour

                  Today was a field trip day where we got the chance to visit historical resources available in our city. I choose to visit the Oliver’s Mansion located in South Bend, IN. It was interesting to visit a building, house, that was built a long time ago and is still standing today. This mansion was maintained the same as when the family was living in it. Their belongings, clothes, furniture, food, dishes, family pictures, and other personal belongings were left in the home and donated to the museum. It was interesting to visit a home like this and imagine what it must have been like living in the home when it was first built. You start to wonder the things that you would do in a big home like this, what would your life be like, what would it feel like living in a time where there weren’t any cars only horses and where everyday customs were different than our own? I can only imagine the questions and thoughts that children might experience when visiting places like these. Allowing children opportunities like these can make history more meaningful to them. It makes it more real too, because it’s more than just reading about it in a history book.  Especially young children benefit from activities like these because they can actually physically experience some form of history and it makes it a little easier to believe that the things they are learning in their books is actually real and really did happen. As teachers we need to provide experiences like these as often as possible. I know that times are getting harder to do activities like these, but there are other ways to make history come to life more our students to understand the world that they live in.