The US Capitol Building

The kids have been having a great time at all the museums and sites we’ve been visiting, but we sure are keeping them busy! Today, we visited the United States Capitol building. The students found it really cool that it sits on top of Capitol Hill and that they had seen it before in pictures. The Capitol building is where Congress meets, and it very important to the legislative branch of our federal government.

At the museum, students (and teachers!) got to learn a lot more about the different branches of government, what they do, and why they are so important. It was interesting to learn the history of this building and that before this building exisited, the Congress used to have to meet in such places as New York and Philadelphia, which are all near us…how cool! For two decades, the Senate and House of Representatives have met at this architecturally beautiful building.

Many exhibits at the museum discussed the history of the building itself and all of the very important people that stepped foot in it, including the all-important presidential inaugurations that have taken place there. We also got a real life look at the Constitution and discussed what it meant to us. We even got to take a test about our Congressional knowledge on cool touch-screen computers and watch movies about it in a giant theater!

Our lesson from this consisted of learning about “what makes the U.S. Capitol so important? With our new knowledge of archival documents and Congress that we obtained, students were able to answer that question for themselves. Working in small groups, the students worked to uncover and share the Capitol's story. Together, we tied together the pieces and focused on the idea of presidential inaugurations which occurred at the building. It was a great time and I hope our students will be able to share some of their new knowledge with you when we get home!