Mt. Pleasant Classical Academy

We have several rules in our home but one rule my boys love is the ‘No School on your birthday’ rule. It is a rule unique to homeschooling and one that I’ve never found in the ‘REAL’ world. At least to my knowledge it isn’t found in the ‘REAL’ world. Personally I’ve never known anyone who had their birthday off while in public school, nor did I have if off during my 20 year tenure as an engineer. But my boys have their birthdays off, and if a birthday falls on the weekend the birthday child may choose to take either the Monday or Friday off instead. Ahhh, one of the little benefits of being homeschooled.

Monday was ScienceKid’s birthday. He wanted us to go kayaking however we had massive quantities of rain over the weekend in DE so the rivers were at flood-stage. Not a safe choice to go kayaking on swollen, flood-stage rivers, although the weather was gorgeous. His second choice was for us to head to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I personally find this choice funny since a trip to an art museum is rather educational. Who said anything about us not doing educational stuff on their birthday; it’s just that we don’t do normal school-stuff. Anyone familiar with art museums know that they are often closed on Mondays, which is the case with both the Philadelphia and the Baltimore Art Museum.

ScienceKid did not want to head to DC and visit any of the Smithsonian exhibits.

What to do?

Suddenly the light bulb clicked on and he asked if we could head to a cave. Sure!!! Luray Caverns was his first thought but looking at a 4hr drive I decided to find something closer. We headed off to the Harrisburg, PA area, to Indian Echo Caverns and had a wonderful hour walk through a very wet cave. From IEC we headed east–NE to Crystal Cave and toured another wet cave. Wet caves are actively forming stalagmites and stalactites so the formations in each cave were beautiful. Crystal Cave is a smaller cave than IEC, and over the years has been damaged more by stalagmite robbers than IEC. IEC’s tour guide was genuine excited and interested to be in the cave showing it to us, while the CC tour guide had the opposite demeanor. We enjoyed both cave tours and decided that this was a great non-school day, even if it was a bit educatioal.
Once back in DE we headed out to a local restaurant for a Mexican dinner. Of course the meal was complete when the servers came with a small cake for ScienceKid and we all sang him Happy Birthday.

Great Day. We like our Homeschool Birthday Rule.