3rd Grade Field Trip

Today Esther and I spent a drizzly morning with her class exploring the history of Grand Rapids.  We started out at the old city cemetery and found the grave of John Ball's family (John Ball of the zoo fame).  We walked around the Heritage Hill area and looked at houses, playing an "I spy" game of finding different types of architecture on the houses and hearing some of the history of them.

Then we went to the City Archives and Museum Storage building.  It was very interesting!  The city archivist is the only one Grand Rapids has had, and he is very knowledgeable.  He is retiring this year, so it was neat that we could meet him.  He showed the students a book of criminal records from the early part of the city's history (late 1800's) and explained how and why they preserve documents.  We then rode a huge elevator and visited the public museum storage.  The curator told us that only 5% of the inventory is actually on display at a time, and that they rotate things regularly so that they will be preserved longer.  There were some very interesting and unusual items there, and he made it fun for the students by showing them some unusual things.

Our final stop was St. Mark's Episcopal Church, which is Grand Rapids' oldest church.  It is a beautiful church, and the pastor did a nice job of explaining the history and also talking about some things that the church currently does to serve the community.

We covered a lot of ground in 3-1/2 hours, but it was a lot of fun and I learned many new things even though I've lived here almost my whole life!