Wright Brothers National Memorial

Little Miss Sunshine showing off her 5 Junior Ranger badges

One of the things we did while in the Outer Banks was go to one of the three National Parks in the area. Ok, they're not technically 'Parks', but you get the idea. There's Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the Wright Brothers National Memorial, and Fort Raleigh National Historic Site.

Each site has a different junior ranger program for the kids.

At Cape Hatteras they can be a seashore ranger,

at the Wright Brothers Memorial they can be a flight ranger,

and at Fort Raleigh they can be a Roanoke ranger.

Personally, I think they differentiate between them to keep interest up in the junior ranger programs. Not that I'm complaining or anything. I really do think they add a lot to the experience for kids, and I know we (Mr M and I) have learned a lot of stuff we wouldn't have if LMS wasn't doing the program.

Because of the road still being washed out by the hurricane we weren't able to do anything in the southern part of the Outer Banks, so we didn't go to Cape Hatteras or Fort Raleigh. Since we plan on going back again, we'll hit them up on future visits.

We did go to the Wright Brothers Memorial, which was pretty cool. I spent my junior and senior high school years not far from Dayton, Ohio, and it always confused me how Ohio could be "The Birthplace of Aviation", when everyone knew the first flights were in Kitty Hawk, NC, not Ohio, and why were they going to North Carolina, anyway? Maybe this was covered in Ohio history in elementary school? I missed that and had California history instead. After going to the memorial, I now understand. The Wright brothers experimented and built their designs in Ohio, then loaded everything on a train to North Carolina. They had made some inquiries and determined that Kitty Hawk had the ideal conditions (wind, lack of vegetation, etc) for their flight attempts.

It's visits like this that are a fun part of homeschooling. 

Isn't LMS cute?