Massachusetts
Discovering Historic Plymouth & Cape Cod With Your Grandchild
Program No. 16349RJ
Journey to Plymouth Rock with your grandchild to find out about life in America 400 years ago for pilgrims and Native Americans. Learn about the Mayflower, and watch for whales!
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6 days
5 nights
13 meals
5B 4L 4D
2
Plimoth Patuxet Museum, Plymouth Waterfront
Plymouth, MA
4
Whale Watching Expedition, Free Time
Plymouth, MA
5
Cape Cod Maritime Museum, Whydah Pirate Museum
Plymouth, MA
6
Plimoth Grist Mill, Program Concludes
Plymouth, MA
At a Glance
Ahoy, matey! Hop aboard this Atlantic adventure on the coast of Massachusetts with your grandchild. Have you ever wanted to meet a pilgrim who sailed aboard the Mayflower? Now you can! At Plimoth Plantation, costumed colonists will tell you what it was like to live in America almost 400 years ago. Find out about their dangerous journey across the Atlantic Sea, and walk through houses like the ones they built in their new home of Plimoth (later spelled Plymouth). Meet boat scientists who will help you navigate Atlantic waterways, and grab your binoculars as you search the waters for the largest mammal on earth: the whale. Plus, go on a scavenger hunt and have fun swimming in the ocean!
Activity Level
Keep the Pace
Walking up to two miles a day on uneven terrain. Sitting and standing during lectures and activities. Riding motor coach for around 1-1.5 hour a day.
Best of all, you’ll…
- Step into the lives of Pilgrims and Native Americans who lived in the region through living history exhibits and workshops at the Plimoth Patuxet Museum.
- While onboard a research vessel, become a scientist yourself as you fill your test tubes with plankton to learn about Cape Cod’s marine animals.
- Set out on a whale watching expedition in Plymouth Harbor.
General Notes
Program is for grandchildren ages 7-10.
Suggested Reading List
(7 books)
Visit the Road Scholar Bookshop
You can find many of the books we recommend at the Road Scholar store on bookshop.org, a website that supports local bookstores.
Discovering Historic Plymouth & Cape Cod With Your Grandchild
Program Number: 16349
Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War
Nathaniel Philbrick became an internationally renowned author with his National Book Award winning In the Heart of the Sea, hailed as spellbinding by Time magazine. In Mayflower, Philbrick casts his spell once again, giving us a fresh and extraordinarily vivid account of our most sacred national myth: the voyage of the Mayflower and the settlement of Plymouth Colony. From the Mayflower's arduous Atlantic crossing to the eruption of King Philip's War between colonists and natives decades later, Philbrick reveals in this electrifying history of the Pilgrims a fifty-five-year epic, at once tragic and heroic, that still resonates with us today.
Whale Port
CHILD BOOK age 10 and up
Long before the invention of electricity or the discovery of underground reservoirs of fossil fuels, people depended on whale oil to keep their lamps lit. A few brave Colonial farmers left their fields and headed out to sea to chase whales and profits farther and farther off shore. When they did, towns sprung up around their harbors as demand grew for sailors, blacksmiths, ropewalkers, and the many other craftsmen needed to support the growing whaling industry. Through the fictional village of Tuckanucket, Whale Port explores the history of these towns. Detailed illustrations and an informative narrative reveal the way Tuckanucket’s citizens lived and worked by sharing the personal stories of people like Zachariah Taber, his family and neighbors, and the place they called home. Whale Port is also the story of America, and the important role whales played in its history and development as people worked together to build communities that not only survived, but prospered and grew into the flourishing cities of a new nation.
A Place Apart: A Cape Cod Reader
A Place Apart features essays and firsthand accounts of notable experiences throughout Cape Cod, including native Wampanoag creation myths; eyewitness accounts of the landing of the Pilgrims in 1620; candid stories of early life in the Old Colony; fascinating and often-harrowing accounts of the whaling and fishing industries; and so much more.
The collection includes famous passages by and about such writers as Melville, Thoreau, Helen Keller, Edmund Wilson, and Kurt Vonnegut, among others.
Plymouth Colony: Its History & People, 1620-1691
This is the first truly complete treatment of the history and genealogy of Plymouth Colony. It includes a concise history of the colony, both chronologically and topically, and more than 300 biographical sketches of its inhabitants. Richly documented and illustrated with maps and photographs, the three-dimensional Plymouth Colony: Its History & People, 1620-1691 was written for historians and genealogists alike and provides and in-depth view of this important epoch in American history.
Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans, and the Making of New England, 1500-1643
Making a radical departure form traditional approaches to colonial American history, this book looks back at Indian-white relations from the perspective of the Indians themselves. In doing so, Salisbury reaches some startling new conclusions about a period of crucial-yet often overlooked-contact between two irreconcilably different cultures.
If You Sailed On The Mayflower in 1620
CHILD BOOK age 7 and up
What kind of ship was the Mayflower? How did the Pilgrims feel when they saw land? What was the first building in Plymouth? In lively question-and-answer style, this fact-filled book answers all sorts of questions about the Pilgrims' journey on the Mayflower and their first year in America.
Boys and girls will find out why the Pilgrims left England to live in America, what they took with them on board the Mayflower, and the hardships they endured. They'll learn what the Mayflower Compact was, how the Pilgrims made a peace treaty with the Indians, and how these brave settlers managed to survive in their new land.
Ms McGovern has carefully researched the Pilgrims' journey and their first year in America. Her portrayal is full of fascinating detail about their everyday life. Young readers will be intrigued to discover that Pilgrim boys and girls slept on corn husk mattresses they made themselves, and that most of the houses had only one chair -- which was reserved for the man of the house!
The humorous, true-to-life illustrations serve as effective complements to the informative, fun-to-read text.
Journey Around Cape Cod From A to Z
CHILD BOOK age 6 and up
Author and illustrator Martha Zschock was a third-grade teacher on Cape Cod. When taking her students on field trips on the Cape, she discovered what sites and stories excited them most. Drawing on that experience, she created what one Cape Cod bookseller calls "the best Cape book we've ever had," and the first in a series of alphabet books that visit great American places. Journey Around Cape Cod and the Islands From A to Z is an alphabet book, but one that is equally enjoyable and interesting for children of all ages and for adults, as well. From Aptucxet to Zooplankton, it offers fascinating information about the Cape and its history, all of it illustrated with Zschock's beautiful watercolor work.
