Mt. Washington

During fourth grade students get their first exposure to NH Studies. Every time I start a lesson on NH it becomes more and more evident that my students have no idea what is available to them outside of the Franklin-Tilton area. For example, today I passed around vintage postcards of Mount Washington that my grandmother gave to me to use in class. Three of the postcards were of the Cog Railway, the other three were of Mount Washington. I did not tell the students what the postcards were pictures of because I wanted to hear what they thought. Well, one of the students told me they thought it was the picture of the train that goes through Belmont (we don't have trains in Belmont). Another said they thought it was a train from Chicago (I do believe we are studying NH...did you know Chicago was in NH?) And the kicker...isn't that the thing at Weirs Beach? (No, that would be a boat!)
Thus began a very lengthy conversation about Mount Washington. After explaining a bunch of things to the kids I realized they were really interested in the subject, so I went to the Mount Washington Observatory web site to show the students some recent photos from the summit. Among the pictures were shots of rime ice (which they thought was the coolest thing), sun sets, a fox, and Tuckerman's Ravine. One student asked me if Tuckerman's Ravine was where the sculpture's of the presidents' heads in the mountain was (Yes, we were looking at a picture of the ravine, and I said, "Joe, can you see any heads?"). Anyway, the kids were really excited about it and asked me if I would take them on a field trip up the mountain.
It was really exciting for me to find something that the students were really interested. But it was also heartbreaking when I realized that this "thing" they were so excited about is less than two hours from their house, has endless educational opportunities, but the possibility of them actually having a first hand experience with Mount Washington is pretty much nonexistent.