Field trips and oral reports

In California, students learn about the early Spanish missions. They take field trips and write reports. In Rouen, students do the same type of thing—except they write about and visit the magnificent Cathédrale Notre-Dame in Rouen.

There were lots of school-aged children in Rouen today, but the most fun to watch were those that were presenting their oral reports on the cathedral.

There's so much to see and report on—I wonder how they divide up this awesome task. There's the history, the architecture, the organist (who we got to meet and talk with yesterday) and his music—the list goes on and on!

To list just a few of the tidbits about the cathedral:

• Construction began on the current cathedral in the 12th century. 
• Richard the Lionhearted's heart is buried here. 
• Claude Monet painted a series of paintings of the cathedral—the same scenes at different times of the day and in different weather conditions.
• The cathedral was nearly destroyed in the bombing that led up to the D-Day invasion in 1944 and has been undergoing restoration ever since.