Social Distance Field Trips Part 1 (our first two trips) by BB
When I scheduled a house remodel I couldn’t fathom a worldwide pandemic. I really had never thought this could actually happen. It’s like a scary movie… but it’s real. In fact, I rushed the project so the kids wouldn’t be home. Well there are some days we really need out. Our house is a bit chaotic and cluttered. My kids have days where they do their schoolwork great and then some days feel kind of like a nightmare. My kids and I are not used to not going. We love to explore and have adventures. So 3 weeks into the stay home order I said to hell with it. We need a freakin break. I messaged the teachers that our mental health needed a change of routine and scenery. Thankfully they both were SUPER understanding and encouraging. I also decided once a week we’re going to do this. Most the time we’ll finish our schoolwork and then head out.
Now for those of you who live in Minnesota you can copy these adventures. I’ll be posting each new road trip we go on. For those of you that live elsewhere I encourage you to think of the places you’ve talked about going to but have never done it. It’s truly not about the destination but the journey. The things that are the most fun for us aren’t always what I would think.
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First Road Trip
Picking up Lunch and Driving
We were having a TOUGH morning of school. No matter how much I pushed my kids weren’t learning. I started school right after spring break even though technically it didn’t start for two weeks because of Coronavirus. I used to teach and searched out resources and began! Well the curve of intolerance happened sooner than what I expected. Oh well, thus began our road trip adventures.
I messaged the teachers and said today is a bad day and we need out. We hopped in the car. I asked the kids what they wanted for lunch. They wanted something different. Normally I would never do that but what the heck we had no time frame or commitments. So we made a couple stops and I used Lysol wipes on everything. Which brings me to the most important part…You need to have a good supply of disinfectant wipes in the car. We clean our hands when we get out of the car and we clean our hands before we get back in. We take every precaution we can.
After we got our food we just drove. We went North, then went East, we went over a big bridge that went from Minnesota to Wisconsin. We drove for about 20 minutes into Wisconsin, went South and then headed back West to our house. We were gone about two hours and it was glorious!! It was just what we needed. We needed out of the house. We needed Mom not being teacher. We needed a break. From this first trip I knew we would do this every week. And this began our Field Trips!!
The Jolly Green Giant. 1350 N Commerce St, Le Sueur, MN 56058 I remember as a kid seeing the Jolly Green Giant up on a hill as you drive by. So why wouldn’t we go do that? It was a week where the remodeling project was in the kitchen. The first day we stayed in the basement but I just couldn’t do that again. It was a bit of a cold crummy day but we went anyway.
Off we drove to Le Sueur, MN. We drove and we listened to Podcasts appropriate for my kids. I’m kind of a Podcast junkie. I love Podcasts and I wanted these field trips to also be educational! That was important to me that we weren’t just hoping in the car but we were learning something as we go. On this day we were listening to Brains On. It’s a great podcast for kids and teaches them about many many different things. Each episode is typically under 30 minutes. I decided that we would learn about Coronavirus and what scientists are doing to help stop the virus. The kids have heard so much but none of it is targeted towards kids. I loved this approach. The kids were very engaged.
So we drove by the big Jolly Green Giant up on a big hill and the GPS said we could go see a statue so we continued to drive a little. Here is what we found…
So as you can see it was cold so we took a couple of pictures but we hopped in the car pretty quickly. I then took to Google to see if there was anything else around that we could go see.
What did we find you ask? Well we found a really cool little house. And what’s even cooler than the little structure was the story behind it. We found W.W. Mayo House. This was Dr. Mayo’s (of the famous Mayo Clinic) first medical clinic. “This hand-built house held Dr. W.W. Mayo’s first medical practice, witnessed events of the US-Dakota War of 1862, and eventually served as the family home of another giant of Minnesota history-the Cosgrove family of the Green Giant Company.” I wish we could’ve gone in it but unfortunately it is closed because of the Coronavirus.
Now I must say these two first field trips are a little simple but I tell you they changed us. They helped us by simply giving us a break. We stayed very safe with our sanitizer. We were able to avoid others because not only do we not want to get Covid-19 we would hate to spread our germs. We don’t want our excursions to jeopardize anyone else.
(We had another field trip to Minneopa State Park -it will be in another post- which is very close to Le Sueur so I would recommend doing Jolly Green Giant and Minneopa on the same day instead of two different days. I’m learning as I go)
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