BELHAVEN — Pungo Christian Academy students recently made their way to the doorstep of American history — Capitol Hill.

About 50 sixth- through 12^th-graders traveled to Washington D.C. in November for a four-day trip to see various tourist sites, including the Holocaust Memorial Museum, Jefferson Memorial, Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery in Virginia, according to history teacher Melinda Paul, who organized the trip.

“When I started here, I think this is my seventh year here at PCA, I (came) to Ms. Morgan and said I would really like to do some trips,” Paul said.

She said the school tries to give every middle and high school student the opportunity to travel to Washington D.C., so the school wants to plan this kind of trip every few years based on graduating classes.

Paul said the students were allowed to spend a total of four hours split between two days at the Smithsonian Institution museums. Students broke off into groups and were able to choose which museum they wanted to tour, with the younger grades requiring a parent chaperone.

Four Pungo Christian students were also able to participate in the wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington Cemetery — kids who were chosen based on a school essay contest, she said.

“I think they need to see things, especially with the nation’s capital,” Paul said. “I think they learn from experiencing those things.”

Pungo Christian Academy planned the trip through Scholastic Journeys, a travel agency that gives good rates for school trips. Each family of a student going on the trip was asked to pay about $450, with the total broken up into a few payments over the course of several months, Paul said.

The school has also held fundraisers in the past to help students whose families may not have the financial means to pay for such a trip, she added.

“They’re still talking about it. They’ll say, ‘Oh, we saw that in Washington D.C.,’” Paul said of this year’s group. “We’ve had really good feedback.”

Marcy Morgan, principal of Pungo Christian Academy, said she thinks it was good for the students to be able to see the roots of the United States, including its early emphasis on Christian values.

“I think every time children are just allowed the opportunity to see maybe what they’ve only seen in a book,” she said. “I am very much an avid traveller. … I think it just gives them a whole other dimension.”

Morgan said the next school trip is already in the works: a trip to France and Spain in October.

“Culture, in general, I think is important,” Paul said. “This trip was very well done. … Overall I think the kids really learned a lot.”