A StoryWalk® is a fun, educational activity that enables children to enjoy reading, the outdoors, and exercise all at the same time! Laminated pages from a children’s story book are attached to wooden stakes to create a walking route for a fun, outdoor reading experience.
In 1770 Colonel Josiah Quincy I built the current Quincy House on his 250-acre country estate. Colonel Quincy and his son Josiah were devoted patriots, but his son Samuel was a loyalist who left for England after the battles at Lexington and Concord and never returned to America. The Revolution divided the family forever.
These fun-filled programs combine themed story books and hands-on craft activities to introduce children in preschool through second grade to New England’s history, at Historic New England’s Pierce House or your location. New programs are frequently added. The examples below are some of our most popular. Contact us for more possibilities!
Take your students on a trip back to the year 1800. This short program is designed to fit into a daylong class trip to Boston. Museum educators lead students on a dynamic, interactive tour of Otis House, the home of Harrison Gray Otis, Sally Foster Otis, and their young family living in Boston after the […]
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.
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.
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 Students learn how to conduct oral history interviews; examine historical documents, objects, and photographs; and design […]
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.
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.
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.
Learn what life in colonial times was like for children in New England. A series of hands-on activities teach about the work, education and play of the Pierce children in eighteenth-century Dorchester. Students will see reproduction clothing that boys and girls wore in the past. Each student will make an herbal sachet, write with quill […]
Learn how Pierce House and its surroundings have changed over time from a 20-acre rural farm to a busy urban neighborhood. Explore the way herbs were used by colonial families like the Pierces to make their food taste better, for medicinal purposes and for household uses. Decorate a pot, plant an herb seed and make […]
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