On Friday we had a fabulous field trip to Historic Washington State Park in Washington, AR for their Frontier Day for Homeschoolers! We planned this field trip to go along with our Little House on the Prairie books we are reading this year. We had SO much fun! Below is a picture of the inside of the 1874 Courthouse where we started. It was so beautiful!

Then we checked out the weapons museum, which was really cool! A wonderful collection of guns and one that was only about 2 inches long & shot bird shot.

Then we traveled across the street to the Print Museum. It was very cool & the girls even got to print their own paper with a building they can assemble. We all learned about how we got the words "Upper Case" and "Lower Case" for letters. You are never too old to learn something new!

Then we went to the Candle Shop and the girls got to dip their own candles into the colored wax! We learned about how paraffin wax was discovered and how they process it. Very interesting!

We had a wonderful surrey ride that was pulled by 2 beautiful black percheron horses! This was not a common surrey because it could hold up to 9 people. We rode all around this beautiful town.

We visited the 1836 Courthouse that was in the original center of town before the town center shifted with the wagon road to was built to take people from Arkansas into what was then Mexican Texas. Davey Crockett even traveled though Washington, AR!

The girls had fun playing frontier games on the big lawn. The loved the stick and hoop game the most!

There was a massive magnolia tree that was almost 200 years old, or older! The pictures don't even take in its size and beauty!

We visited the 1835 Royston Log Cabin and learned about how the cut and planned their logs and made furniture. On the grounds we were shown local persimmon seeds and we cut them open. Depending on the shape of the seeds, it is supposed to predict the winter weather. Our shape was a spoon, which predicts a snowy cold winter!

We then walked over to the Pioneer Graveyard. It was very sad seeing all those babies and young people that died.

After a burger lunch at the burger barn we visited the Blacksmith Shop and the 1914 Schoolhouse.

The next stop was very impressive. It was the Block House. The Block House was the very first 2 story wooden home built in the state of Arkansas! It was built in 1832 by Abraham Block, a Jewish Immigrant! I am sorry I didn't get a picture of the outside of the home, just some inside pictures. We couldn't touch anything, because some of the furniture was from the 1700's! The middle picture is a cut out of the inside of the walls, so you could see how it was built with tongue and groove construction. No nails were used, just pegs that were burnished.

We loved the visit to the 1845 Sanders Farm and Homestead. We watched a lady dying wool outside the detached kitchen, and had fun exploring the barn, chicken coop & some kind of huge bird house. They even had a 3 hole outhouse, with a special seat for a child!!

We passed by the Presbyterian Church that was built in 1889 & still needed fixing up. There was a small Post Office right across from that.

After that we drove all over this really neat town and found Goodlett Cotton Gin that was built in 1883 and moved from the nearby town of Ozan. It wasn't ready to be opened to the public, but it was a complete Gin that still had all the original equipment!

This town was very cool! From what I understand the state bought many buildings in the town in the 1950's and started fixing them up. They were just abandoned and filled with junk. It's like the town that time forgot. You can almost see the horse drawn wagons going through town and all the ladies in their beautiful dresses walking around. We cant wait to go back! We drove through the town of Hope and of course Hope had to jump out and take a picture of the town sign!

That night we continued the theme and had a family pioneer night. We only used oil lamps for light, cooked dinner over a fire, and had no TV, phones, laptop, etc. The girls danced to fiddle music just like Pa used to play in the Little House books. We had a blast!