Tennessee State Museum - Homeschool Field Trip

I LOVE field trip days because it gives us a chance to get out of the house and go exploring and today it was all about history.

The Tennessee State Museum is a great place to learn about the state's history. This museum has a MASSIVE, EXTENSIVE collection of historic Tennessee paintings, silver, ceramics, textiles, furniture, and firearms. Its Civil War holdings of uniforms, battle flags, and weapons are nothing less than AMAZING. If studying history is your thing, you could spend a whole day touring the three levels of this monstrous museum. The photographs I collected today will only give you a very small picture of just a tiny portion of the exhibits. After spending a few hours there, we actually realized that we missed a whole level! I would really like to go back and see what we missed and go through the museum again.

But for now, let's head back in time.

The Upper Level of the museum begins with the earliest known migration of people to Tennessee and continued through the early 1800's. We observed a lot of Indian culture, some of the more modern Indian cultures were that of the Cherokee and Chickasaw. There were so many artifacts of pottery, weaponry, jewelry, too many to take photos of, so we just looked around and viewed some of the paintings and artifacts.

Then we moved into European Exploration and Frontier (1540 - 1815). Spanish conquistadors were the first Europeans to reach Tennessee, followed by the French and English explorers. Aaron was remembering a lot of this from his history class. After seeing all of the woodworking that they were able to make, the handmade furniture, clothing, Conestoga wagon, a cabin, a printing press, all of the weaponry, these people were skilled.

Next, we moved into the Age of Jackson (1815 -1849). Tennessee's own Andrew Jackson became the seventh President of the United States. He was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, and the British at the Battle of New Orleans.

But the "age of Jackson" wasn't just about President Andrew Jackson, it was also a time when government became more responsive to the "common folk". 

At this point, we found the elevator and thought we were heading to the level with Antebellum exhibits but then realized later that we missed that level altogether. Instead, we headed right into the Civil War and Reconstruction (1870 -1900). There was so much to see in these exhibits that we really need to take another day to go back and see everything on that level alone. The Civil War exhibits examine the causes of the war, the division within the state, and the aftermath. There were special displays of firearms, Tennessee-made silver, quilts, coverlets, Civil War battle flags and uniforms.

Tennessean Andrew Johnson became our country's 17th president in 1865 after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.

Sydney's favorite part of the trip was the hands on history project for kids. She had fun designing a quilt.

As you can see, there was a lot to see at the museum and every bit of it was free. :o) We spent a couple of hours there and then bellies started rumbling due to lunch time hunger so it was time to wrap it up, head to the museum store for a treat and grab our picnic lunch and head to a picnic table. Aaron picked out some neat pencils that he really liked at the museum store and Sydney picked out a neat little toy, not pictured, but it was called a "Fling Zing".

Well, until the next field trip, thanks for checking out our pictures.

                                     ~Tracy