A Little Art... A Little Culture

My friend Tammy and I both home school. The best part of home schooling is finding those families you click with and partnering up to do things together. Tammy's kids are a bit farther along in their schooling than mine, they are studying Vol. 2 of the Story of the World - so while my child is obsessed with Rome, her kids are learning about other civilizations. One of them being the Ming Dynasty.

We found out that the St. Louis Art Museum had a Ming Dynasty exhibit until the middle of this month, so Tammy jumped at the chance to take her kiddos and invited us to go along - and we jumped at the chance for a field trip.


My mom sat with my younger two and Huston, Isaiah and I headed to St. Louis with the gang on a very rainy day. It rained cats and dogs the whole way there and the whole time we were in the Museum... so much for the plans of a picnic lunch and exploring Forest Park afterward!

Here are the kids waiting patiently in line to see the exhibit - luckily there was a wishing well right next to where the line snaked around so the kids were enthralled with the amount of money they saw in the water, and the line moved swiftly enough that we didn't have to wait around too long. (you can tell my kids are really excited to have their picture taken!)


And here is where the pictures take a break because you can't photograph their exhibit items. But we saw some beautiful things. Things too awesome to even describe - intricate embroidery, awesome carvings and paintings and all of them dating at times hundreds of years before our country even began. Admittedly the kids were bored at times, if not a good part of the time for my kiddos, but it exposed them to a few great lessons: how to behave in a museum, that there is important and interesting stuff outside of our own country and culture. Hopefully some seeds were planted.

Our tickets for the exhibit were right around lunch time and so we didn't stay around to see much of anything else in the museum because the kids were getting both bored and starving, mom! so we skedaddled and went to find some lunch. But Isaiah noticed that the museum has an Ancient Rome exhibit until Sept. so I guess he'll drag himself back for that!

Some parting shots - the only "exercise" the kids had that morning, jumping around on the front columns while Tammy got the car, in the rain. (did I mention it cleared off as soon as we sat down for lunch... *sigh*)


A look out to the statue in front of the museum, wet from the rain :0)

Really, the kids did great and we will be back on a nice sunny day.