You Need to Keep Them Close

Virginia has this great program called Virginia TimeTravelers, encouraging families to visit museums across the state. For each participating museum you visit the kids receive a stamp in their passport and after so many stamps they receive a certificate signed by the governor.

The Virginia Quilt Museum is one of the participating museums. The museum is close to us, it is small and sounded like an easy stamp, so I thought why not. Well, I can think of several reasons why not, the big one being kids and quilts don't exactly equal a good time. At first I thought of making our trip a scavenger hunt by giving them a list of special designs, colors or quilts to find, but after checking the museums website I gave up on that idea since they don't show pictures of all the quilts. Then I thought of introducing them to geometry, or whatever mathematical whatever is associated with quilts. OK, so I just explained why that little idea didn't work; plus my oldest is 7, and none of them are Doogie Howser material. Then I saw that the museum has a Children's Room, bonus...let's go.

Before arriving I gave them the "so help me God if you don't behave" talk. We entered, I sat them on a bench so I could pay the nice lady behind the table. During this time my lovely angels discovered that the bench they were sitting on could move, and so began the shoving match, over the bench, trying to move it, with children wrestling one another. And this is where I found the title for this posting, once the kids were settled (and sitting in opposite ends of the room) and we paid our admission the very nice lady sitting at the table said "now you will need to keep them close." ".... Ummm, ... thanks."

Off we trotted, with much improvement in our behavior. We checked out the quilts, stood amazed at the old fashion sewing machines "you mean they peddled them, they couldn't plug them in?", tried to talk about patterns, pictures, and sewing techniques, and browsed the gift shop. Here, at the gift shop, is where we lost our new found composure. My oldest has sticky fingers, and not because they are always in his mouth. (No, he doesn't shop lift, he just likes touching everything. He is a tactile kid.) He likes to touch everything. So does my 3-year-old, however my youngest is still learning, my oldest should ... SHOULD ... know better. We both lost our composure when he, one too many times, reached to pick up something and I swapped him upside the head, a little too hard considering there was a lady standing next to us who probably noticed the loud "thud".

Oh, and for the Children's Room, it was closed due to a needle point, or some crafty type, guild meeting downstairs where the Children's Room is located. Oh well, I kept my kids close to me. We survived our visit, as did the quilts, and the kids received one more stamp on their passports. But one would think that if a museum is participating in a program for children their activities for children would be accessible, but that's just me thinking aloud. Plus, and this is just a suggestion, post some information on how quilts use mathematics, or their designs come from geometry, or whatever it is. True, quilts are amazing in the techniques used, designs, and colors. But there is a whole intellectual element that seems to be unexplored. Oh, can anyone else see the SOLs developing?