A Visit to Ft. Menendez

One afternoon near the end of July, the kids and I headed down to check out one of the local tourist attractions.  It's called Ft Mendendez/The Old Florida Museum and is a type of hands-on museum where they reenact life in the early days of St. Augustine.

This attraction opened in their new location less than a year ago and we have been wanting to check it out.  The exterior is very well recreated  and makes you want to see what is inside.  To our surprise, when we got there we found that we were one of only three families visiting at the time. 

When we arrived we were greated by Armando who told us all about the journey that we would be taking.  The kids each chose a job so that they could earn gold coins to trade in at the end of their journey...should they work hard to earn the gold coins.  Emory chose to be a soldier and Ellie chose to be a cook.

Our first stop was to see the Spanish village.  There a very nice Spaniard taught us all about what life would have been like should we have helped settle St. Augustine.  As cook, Ellie got to work grinding the corn by hand so that she could earn her gold coins.  It was hard work in the summer sun.

They also had a chance to learn how the settlers made candles.  They got to dip the strings into the hot wax to make the candles and then bring their candles home with them.

Inside one of the building they learned all about the daily life of the soldiers.  Ellie and Ellie each tried on the huge -very heavy - metal helmet that they would wear while fighting.

Our next stop was the Indian village where we learned how the Indians lived.  Here we found lots of animals skins and much more primitive ways of living.

The indian chief was kind enough to share his face paint  and help the kids make shell necklaces to take with them.

At the end of the journey, we returned to Armando who questioned the kids about what they had learned and looked to see that they had each answered correctly the questions related to their chosen job in each of the different villages.  They were both successful and earned their gold coins...to trade in for prizes in the gift shop!  It was a really great idea because they each picked out a couple of little things and we didn't have to buy anything else.

All in all, this was a fun place to visit but might have been a little more fun had there been more people there to share the experience with.