Gamble House field trip

Today Ellie had a field trip that I had been looking forward to for years. Every 3rd grade run PUSD gets a tour of the Gamble House. The tours are lead by junior docents, middle-school kids who have been through training. Today was Ellie’s day to go on the tour and there was no way I was going to miss this field trip. So I chaperoned and got a group of 6 kids from her class to keep from touching artifacts while they were taught History and about the house. 

Main concepts that the junior docents stressed for the kids was Greene and Greene were about showing nature in their work and the imperfections of nature; the Gambles and Greene brothers appreciated Asian art and culture and incorporated it into the house; and electricity was new and people were afraid of it. Kids looked for cranes and bats and dragons and weird things about the lights. The junior docents did a great job and was very patient with all the kids...my group had tons of questions (some even stumped the docent and I had to step in to help her). 

The kids were amazed at the sleeping pitches, the size of the house, all the storage cabinets, the secret door and use of it by servants, the kitchen and pass-through window, and the funny telephones which were really annunciatiors. 

The kids were great and well behaved. It really was quite a bit of fun to chaperone this one.