Learning to Weave
Students will learn how wool is turned into yarn, try their hand at carding and spinning wool before weaving on a loom to make a bracelet or bookmark to take home.
Archives
In Search of a Story
Students explore primary source documents, diaries, and maps. They learn about artifacts recovered through archaeology here at the property, and hear stories based on these historical references. Students explore the life of Offin Boardman, a wealthy Newburyport merchant and Revolutionary war privateer, as well as his family and others including servants, sailors, farm hands and […]
Fun and Games: Metro Boston
Explore the pastimes of children from the Pilgrim era to the first years of the New Republic. Students make a toy, play games, solve riddles, and find out how changing attitudes towards childhood affected children’s toys and pastimes.
Historic Games: Newbury and North Shore
Explore the pastimes of children from the Puritan era to the first years of the New Republic. Students play games, solve riddles, and find out how changing attitudes towards childhood affected children’s toys and pastimes.
Farm Technologies: Past and Present
In this math and science-focused program, students explore current and historic farming practices through a variety of hands-on activities at Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm. Students use all their senses while conducting scientific field experiments; discovering the principles of weights, measures, and simple machines..
Family Ties at Pierce House
Everyone has a history worth recording. Family Ties provides students with the tools to tell their stories. During the program, students learn how the Pierce family preserved their ancestral home in Dorchester and other family treasures through ten generations. Students learn how to conduct oral history interviews; examine historical documents, objects, and photographs; and design […]
Dirt Detectives at Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm
This experiential learning program features hands on learning stations where students become archaeologists. Students will excavate a mock pit with actual tools of the trade, process (piece together) reproduction artifacts in a field lab, analyze the artifacts, and then tour the museum to learn how artifacts discovered in archaeology and primary source materials merge together […]
Cub Scout Programs
Historic New England’s Casey Farm in Saunderstown, Rhode Island, is proud to offer Cub Scout troops affordable educational activities to help scouts reach their goals for obtaining activity, achievement, and elective badges.
Creative Spaces
What does your room say about you? Learn about special spaces at Historic New England houses, view a scrapbook house owned by a nineteenth-century girl, and design your own room using collage materials.
Creating a Scrapbook
We have learned a lot about the Pierce family’s history through documents that they left behind. Antoinette Louise Pierce lived about a hundred years ago and kept scrapbooks where she saved newspaper clippings, pictures, and keepsakes that tell us about her and what she was like.
Colonial Trades: Making Community Work
Students learn what life was like on Pierce Farm during the years leading up to the Revolution. A pre-visit activity based on Colonel Samuel Pierce’s account book allows students to take on the roles of real Dorchester residents, including farmers, weavers and blacksmiths.
Living in New England’s Colonies
This hands-on, multidisciplinary school program allows students an in-depth exploration of early New England history through the lives and stories of the men, women, and children of the period.
