Tour of the State Capitol Building

May 19, 2010

On Monday I traded in a day in the classroom for a day trip to Sacramento with a bus load of fifth graders. Danielle and all her classmates have been studying the state of California, and I got to accompany them on their visit to the Capitol Building.

We got off to a very early start for the three hour bus ride north. We loaded the buses at 4:45 a.m., so that meant my day started at 3:45. Honestly, I didn't sleep very much anyway, because I was so worried I'd accidentally sleep through the alarm and fail to get us to the buses on time. Danielle didn't sleep much either because she was so excited. I actually figured we'd get to fall back asleep on the bus ride, but those kids were much wider awake than any of us chaperones were.


We arrived and checked in and got a tour of the building. Our tour guide was impressed by how much our kids knew about the government and the state of California (which means their teachers did a great job preparing them!). We saw the inside of the rotunda, the original governor's offices, and the Senate floor, as well as our current governor's office.


Once the tour was over, we headed back to the buses and were off to Old Town Sacramento. There were seven kids in my group, and we had lunch together, roamed around Old Town, and shopped. All of my kids were so polite--it really was fun wandering around with them. They thought it was amazing how many candy stores there were in such a small space. I think there were five of them. Naturally, they wanted to check them all out. I hope they didn't come home with too much of a contact sugar rush.

(Danielle with her teacher, Mrs. Nunes.)

After a few hours we needed to get back on the buses so we could get home. Danielle and I sat together, her head in my lap nearly the whole way home. That was probably my favorite part of the trip: )

Sign in the Capitol Building:

Part of it reads: "During reconstruction, worker's reinforced the drum exterior..."

Wouldn't you think if they were going to engrave signs and post them up in the State's Capitol Building that they'd want to check to make sure they weren't using an unnecessary apostrophe? That's supposed to be plural, not possessive!