Hands on History

Old Stone House Museum & Historic Village Preschool Educational Programs

This school year the Old Stone House Museum & Historic Village invites you and your two-to-six-year-old children to join us in unique educational programming. This educational pilot program is offset by grant funders and the museum for the 2020 through 2022 school year. Leila Nordmann, Associate Director of Museum Education, will deliver programs about the museum and its history at your childcare center or preschool. Please contact Leila Nordmann for availability to lead these programs at your site.

Discovering Faces:

Join us to discover our own and eachothers’ faces! We will take a closer look at facial shapes, such as eyes, nose, mouth and ears plus hair color and texture. We will think about what those parts do, discussing our five senses such as seeing with our eyes and the range of colors and shapes of people’s eyes can be. There will be a hands-on matching game and a reading of the book All the Colors We Are: The Story of How We Get Our Skin Color by Katie Kissinger as part of the activity.

Identity and Self Portraits:

As a group we will create self portraits and thinking about our individual identities. Using only four colors of paint and mixing them, we will explore skin color, the range of color among students and how it relates to a portrait to be painted and hung in the state house of Alexander Lucius Twilight. After the activity, there will be a reading of the book The Color of Us by Karen Katz.

Measuring and Weighing with Squash:

Using fall fun items like squash and pumpkins grown at the Old Stone House, children will think about their relative size and weight while learning how to grow squash, seed to fruiting body. Two balance scales, simple rulers, and the book From Seed to Pumpkin by Wendy Pfeffer are part of this interactive presentation.

Learning with Chalkboards:

Vermont is full of rocks and a certain types of these rocks help us do things. With real slate, pieces of chalk, and wool, children will experiment on what you can do with a chalkboard. Why was it an amazing piece of technology? We will talk about the supposed inventor of the chalkboard, Samuel Read Hall back in 1814. He was considered the first person to use the technology in the United States who lived right here in Brownington, Vermont. The book: A Rock Can Be by Laura Purdie Salas will be part of this presentation.

Building with Granite:

How do you build something larger than you? The Old Stone House built by Alexander Lucius Twilight out of heavy granite is one of those feats. We will talk about the myth of how he built the Old Stone House by hand with only the aid of an ox. With play foam blocks, children will try to solve the problem of building something larger than themselves. This presentation will include pieces of granite, small wooden building blocks, and foam blocks.