Talking Spirits: Forest Hill Cemetery Tour
Talking Spirits: Forest Hill Cemetery Tour.
1 Speedway Road
Madison, WI
When: Every year in October
Group tours from 9am to 4pm
Cost: $5/adult, $2/child, or $40/group
Contact information:
Wisconsin Veterans Museum at 608-267-1799
As part of our unit, Wisconsin and the Civil War, we will attend the annual event, Talking Spirits: Forest Hill Cemetery Tour. This 90 minute tour features living history presentations from local actors, actresses, and re-enactors in period dress who will be acting as various characters from the Civil War. These presentations will provide students with information about the contributions of Wisconsin soldiers and citizens during the Civil War. The students will see the grave sites of people related to individuals we studied throughout our unit. For example they will see the grave of Colonel Cassius Fairchild- the brother of Governor Lucius Fairchild and orphans who lived at the Soldiers’ Orphans Home founded by Cordelia Harvey.
The cost of the fieldtrip is $40 which we can pay for in multiple ways- we can use some of our yearly allotted fieldtrip funds through our school, ask for grants and donations, or ask parents for contributions.
We will take the city bus, as the location is close by (near West High School). Since we will be taking the tour as a whole group, we will only need about 2 chaperones, just for additional supervision.
Goals for the field trip:
1 Speedway Road
Madison, WI
When: Every year in October
Group tours from 9am to 4pm
Cost: $5/adult, $2/child, or $40/group
Contact information:
Wisconsin Veterans Museum at 608-267-1799
As part of our unit, Wisconsin and the Civil War, we will attend the annual event, Talking Spirits: Forest Hill Cemetery Tour. This 90 minute tour features living history presentations from local actors, actresses, and re-enactors in period dress who will be acting as various characters from the Civil War. These presentations will provide students with information about the contributions of Wisconsin soldiers and citizens during the Civil War. The students will see the grave sites of people related to individuals we studied throughout our unit. For example they will see the grave of Colonel Cassius Fairchild- the brother of Governor Lucius Fairchild and orphans who lived at the Soldiers’ Orphans Home founded by Cordelia Harvey.
The cost of the fieldtrip is $40 which we can pay for in multiple ways- we can use some of our yearly allotted fieldtrip funds through our school, ask for grants and donations, or ask parents for contributions.
We will take the city bus, as the location is close by (near West High School). Since we will be taking the tour as a whole group, we will only need about 2 chaperones, just for additional supervision.
Goals for the field trip:
- Students will realize that there are many local historic sites and resources that can be used to learn more about the Civil War and our state’s history.
- Students will make connections between new information provided in the tour and the knowledge they have gained from our unit study.
- Students will learn about contributions made by Wisconsin soldiers and citizens during the Civil War .
Field trip Guide
Students will have a Field trip Guide which they can use to keep track of the presenters and write down any new facts they learned. (This guide is based off of last year’s tour’s characters. Since the characters change each year, a new guide will be created prior to our field trip)
Post Field Trip
After the fieldtrip we will do a few activities based on what we learned about each person. We will have a full class discussion about general reactions to the tour- which character stood out to you, what interesting facts you learned, what questions you still have, etc. Then students will also be asked to complete a journal entry about one character they selected from the tour. They will write about who the person was, what their contributions were, what they learned about them, any interesting facts, etc.
