Chincoteague Island, Virginia

Like most 10 year old girls I was horse crazy.  Unlike most girls, my Mom indulged me and at 13 years old I visited Chincoteague Island and saw Pony Penning.  I visited the home of Misty of Chincoteague, and spent most of my vacation money buying Breyer horses.

Fast forward a few years and I have a horse crazy daughter, and we’re studying Virginia for our homeschool geography, so I had a perfectly valid excuse to teach about Chincoteague Island.

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Our Chincoteague Island books

Okay, technically the books we read are about Assateague Island, but still…….

I checked out a couple of books about Chincoteague Island and Assateague Island, but I liked Wild Ponies* the best.  The artwork appealed to me more.  Though Pony Island is a perfectly valid book if you can find it.

Both books talk about the Assateague ponies and their lives.  I find the story of the Assateague ponies fascinating (probably because I obsessively read every Marguerite Henry* book I could get ahold of as a kid, and Misty of Chincoteague* in particular, my regret is not being able to convince Princess of the joys of her books)

One of the things that stood out to me as we read the book was the many different colors of horses on the island, so we each colored what our horse from the island would look like.

Chincoteague Island activity

While we colored I asked them which of the legends for how the horses got there they liked best.

Most of us agreed we liked the Spanish Galleon legend, but there are other ones briefly mentioned here.  If you read “Misty of Chincoteague” you get a much extended version of how the horses got there.  I hadn’t realized until I was doing background info for this project that there was more than one theory.

They all had fun coloring the horses.  It amused me that our friend colored a nice normal horse.  That Superman started with a normal paint horse and then after Batman created his blue monstrosity, Superman’s very quickly changed into a multi-colored “horse of a different color.”

Yeah, I totally had them backwards.  Superman had the blue monstrosity, and Batman started off with the paint.

See, Superman wore the Star Wars Lego shirt later in the week also, so that’s going to be my excuse for getting them wrong.  That and I can’t clearly see the faces……….

Yeah, that’s it.  I always know the difference in my kids.

Seriously ya’ll, I’m so screwed if they ever seriously try to pass themselves off as their brother, as long as they don’t open their mouths they might pull it off.  I still have my UBER-humiliate back-up plan.

I’m gonna link this over at All Things Beautiful and Start

Want some more information to virtually visit Virginia?

• George Washington lesson
• Patrick Henry lesson
• Mount Vernon
• Monticello
• Colonial Williamsburg
• Thomas Jefferson