September and October are among the best times of the year to save on trips to educational destinations. Homeschoolers will delight in the sparse crowds and reduced admission rates offered by attractions that see a dip in visitors once the new academic year begins.
If you are looking to share amazing hands-on learning experiences with your children this fall, consider visiting the following:
GETTYSBURG
The site of the Civil War’s most famous battle and the place where Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous Gettysburg Address is open to the public on a daily basis. While there you can tour exhibits at the visitor’s center, which explain the Battle of Gettysburg and its impact on the country. Don’t miss climbing to the top of the 393-foot Gettysburg National Tower, which provides an expansive view of the battlefield and surrounding area.
LA BREA TAR PITS
The La Brea Tar Pits has long been the destination for grade-school field trips, but no matter how old you are you will likely be entranced by what you see here. There’s just something magical about watching bubbling ponds of black ooze and a host of working paleontologists buzzing around them. The lab in the Page Museum is where you can view busy scientists hard at work cleaning and cataloging some of the museum’s more than one million fossilized specimens.
FORT BOONESBOROUGH STATE PARK
If you have a Daniel Boone fan in your house, he or she will be delighted to see a handwritten note by the famous trailblazer and other rare artifacts at the museum at Fort Boonesborough State Park in Boonesboro, Kentucky. The facility commemorates the September 1778 attack on Fort Boonesborough by Shawnee Indians. Back then settlers holed up inside their ramshackle fort for 10 days before the Indians eventually withdrew. Along a rare note handwritten by Boone, other items on display include a 1750s vintage smoothbore fowling gun; a working 18th-century compass like the ones early Kentucky surveyors used; an iron hatchet head that was found in Boone’s Cave in Jessamine County; and a painting depicting one of the Indian attacks on Fort Boonesborough in the 1770s. The museum also explores Kentucky’s role in the Civil War and other events that have shaped the state.
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