Getting kids to dive into history can be a chore — but a chore well worth the effort.
Here’s what it might look like, if the kids dive in:
ON the kind of humid summer day that sends visitors to Washington running for cool cover, not even free air-conditioning could lure more than a trickle of tourists into the art museums lining the National Mall.
But 35 miles south at the National Museum of the Marine Corps near Quantico, Va., visitors in a virtual boot camp tested their mettle against drill instructors and their marksmanship on an M-16 laser-rifle range.
Up the Potomac at Mount Vernon, crowds spilled onto a four-acre replica of George Washington’s working farm, while inside the Revolutionary War Theater the rumble of cannons and the cold prick of snow falling overhead lent verisimilitude to the re-enactment of his troops crossing the Delaware River.
And at the International Spy Museum in downtown Washington, visitors with $16 advance tickets snaked out the door as they waited their turn to practice fantasy espionage, complete with assumed identities, pen cameras, shoe phones and the kind of super-spy cars Q might have dreamed up for 007.
Admit it. Learning about history has rarely been so much fun.
You’re not close to Quantico, nor to Washington, D.C.? How about you get your kids to invent a museum.
The New York Times collaborates with Columbia University’s Bank Street College of Education to produce lesson plans based on stories from the Times, every week day.
You may subscribe to get a lesson plan to your e-mail box every day. Or you can track them down at the Times’ website.
Below the fold, without editing, I list the lesson plan sent out September 10, as an example. Sounds like a good day in class, to me.
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 