I recall a Peanuts comic strip in which Sally Brown and another little girl are walking through an art museum as part of a school field trip. Both girls admire the paintings around them. Then Sally’s companion comments on the fun they are having. Sally warns her to be quiet, claiming that since the field trip is “educational,” they couldn’t be having fun. Combining fun and education can be done, as anyone who visits Heritage Farm near Huntington, West Virginia will discover. The petting zoo, mentioned in my last blog, is a good place for families with children to start. The animals are used to being petted, so they are not spooked when they feel the touch of human hands. Even so, there are volunteers who will bring the animals out of their pens and hold them still while children become better acquainted with them. An aluminum roof covers the petting zoo, so a rainstorm does not have to interrupt the fun.

Two of the Farm’s best indoor places for kids are the Children’s Activity Museum and MakerSpace. In the museum, young people can learn first-hand what life was like for boys and girls who lived on farms 100 or more years ago. They can pump water, churn butter, or milk an (artificial) cow. When these chores are done, they can see what it was like to be a student in a one-room schoolhouse, and once school is over, make music with banjos and other instruments. In the MakerSpace, kids (and their parents) can sit at a variety of tables and try their hand at crocheting, drawing, building with Legos, creating electrical circuits, and other self-guided activities. I decided to see if I could create an electrical circuit that would set a little windmill in motion. Using the tried-and-true method of trial and error, I eventually got the little thing spinning. But Thomas Edison I am not.

Kids can learn history, too, at the MakerSpace from an enormous brightly colored mural that chronicles key cultural and historical events in the U.S. from Pearl Harbor to 9/11. John Glenn, Marilyn Monroe, John F. Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ronald Reagan, Michael Jackson, Lucille Ball, Billie Jean King, Bob Hope, Joe DiMaggio, Walt Disney, the Marx Brothers, and the Beatles are among the hundreds of people featured on this amazing work of art. It’s easy to imagine children walking from one end of the mural to other while asking their parents, “Who are these people?”

When they’re done playing indoors, children can continue their fun and education outdoors at a playground that, along with swings and slides, features wooden kiosks on the six simple machines and how they work: lever, wheel, pulley, inclined plane, wedge, and screw. Older children have the option of scrambling up a climbing wall (while wearing a safety harness), throwing axes, swimming, and using a bow and arrow on an archery range. When the day is done, they and their families can go to one of Heritage’s inns (they have names such as Applebutter and Woodberry) and enjoy the atmosphere of a cabin along with the conveniences of modern living.

The picture of the past that Heritage Farm offers to children will likely make them better appreciate the advantages they have from living in the 21st century. They’ll understand that hard work and patience were necessary to keep a house warm, to travel even a short distance, and to bring food to the table. And even as they learn these things, they’ll be having fun and getting exercise. Heritage Farm has found the “magic formula” for making education fun. Even Sally Brown would have to agree.