I don’t know if I should say this or not, but I really don’t care for virtual learning days. My only hesitation in saying so is that I am a substitute teacher. As such, I probably shouldn’t have a problem with kids continuing to learn outside of the traditional school setting. However, that’s just it. The majority of the work that kids do on virtual learning days is busy work. Maybe “reinforcing existing knowledge” would be a more appropriate term to use in this instance. However, I’m not a fan.
It just so happens that I’m not the only one in my house
that feels that way though. Ellie and Ethan share my feelings towards. In fact,
that was fairly evident yesterday when after one hour of virtual learning, they
had basically met every goal that their teachers had for them for the day.
While they could have continued to do some virtual work, I found myself not
only wanting to escape the house but also wanting to make sure that Ellie and
Ethan learned something. After a little bit of research and a few ideas that
were shot down by one or the other, we settled on a trip to The Money Museum.
In case you don’t know, The Money Museum is actually housed
in the Kansas City branch of the Federal Reserve. That means that we had a
little drive downtown ahead of us. When we reached the Fed, I was more than a
little concerned about the completely empty parking lot that we found there.
Perhaps we had made our trip in vain. However, those feelings were rectified as
we were met by security at the entrance and escorted inside.
The first thing that we found was a complete wall of coins known
as the Harry S. Truman Coin Collection. Under a picture of each U.S. President,
there lay a collection of coins that were actively used during their
presidency. I was more than a little surprised to see the number of questions
that Ellie and Ethan had about the different coins there. Honestly, some of
them were relatively hard to answer like Ellie asking, “Why wouldn’t they just
call it a nickel instead of a half-dime?” I never did have an answer for that
one.
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| An image of the coins used during the tenure of the first three Presidents. |
After finishing up at the wall of coins, we continued to
weave through the Money Museum. The kids were next drawn to a glass case
containing a gold brick. A twenty-seven pound gold brick with a handle attached
to it to be precise. The case contained one hole big enough to put one’s arm
through so that you could attempt to lift said brick. Even though we all tried
multiple times, none of us were able to lift the brick. Don’t judge me too
much; it was a really awkward angle.
After trying in vain to lift the brick, we found a table engraved
with various brass plates with pieces of paper and crayons that you could use
to create rubbings of your own dollar bills. Ellie and Ethan absolutely loved
this and spent a ton of time designing and coming up with their own special
design. I even got into the spirit and spent some time designing as well. I
think my bill might be the first ever bill to feature a cow in the center of
the bill!
The final stop along our tour was at a window that peered
inside the Fed’s vault where we could watch workers process money. It probably
comes as no surprise to those that know her but Ellie is very inquisitive by
nature. As such, she was filled with question after question about everything
that was happening inside the vault. Ethan, for his part, was more intrigued by
the three robotic forklifts (named Snap, Crackle, and Pop) that were responsible
for carrying large boxes of cash from room to room.
Finally, after about an hour and a half, the kids let me know that they were ready to call it a day at the Money Museum. However, before we could leave, we still had to grab our free bag of shredded money to keep as a souvenir.
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| Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures of the vault. As such, enjoy these photos of the kids. |
While I never know exactly how much the kids get out of an outing like this, I was pleasantly surprised when both kids sat around the dinner table that night and regaled Bethany with tales of everything they had learned on their outing. I guess we did do some learning on a snow day. Pretty cool, right?
#DaddyWrite
