Mt. Holy Cemetery ~ a cool field trip!

Our homeschool group leaders were contacted about setting up a field trip to a place in Little Rock called Mt. Holy Cemetery.  I volunteered to do so.  I was thinking it was an odd request, but I went with it. Surprisingly, I had several families sign up to join in on the trip.

Couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day to be roaming around a cemetery!  The weather was gorgeous!  Anyways, about the trip... a lady at Arkansas Historical Preservation Society set this up with a lady, Abby Burnett, who is very interested in cemeteries, headstones and icons & symbols.  She has done tons of research and has a book in the works as well as a documentary, Silent Storytellers.

She spent some time telling us about the different symbols that we would find on headstones, why they were there and possibly what they meant.  We were able to ask a few questions and have some discussion, and then we were given a scavenger hunt list and turned loose!  She also gave us some marking flags in case we came upon one that was different or unique or we had a question about it.  We spent an hour roaming among the headstones, taking in all that she had pointed out to us.

Once the hour was up, we all met back at the start and talked about what we had found, we went on a tour of flaggings - places that someone in our group had marked- then all the kiddos were given pencil and paper and asked to come up with their own symbols.  What a creative bunch we have!

We were able to stay and hang out, Abby was there for questions and some folks even brought lunch to eat on the grounds so they could continue with their searching!