School Field Trip Experience Request
This is a request for a field trip. Museum staff will send you a communication/confirmation once your request is processed, normally within 3-5 business days.
Field Trip Experiences cost $3 per person with one free chaperon accompanying every 10 students. Programs last one hour. Museum staff select hands-on activities based on grade level and group size. Minimum group size is 10: Maximum group size is 25 students. For larger groups, we offer assistance booking other field trip destination sites on campus. Larger groups, up to 50 students, can book our Do & Discover program. Please book two weeks in advance by calling 581.4100 or submitting this form.
Do and Discover – Students embark on a super fun mystery hunt through the Museum! Students draw on clues to locate exhibitions and access information on key concepts involving the artifacts and folkways presented within those exhibits. Students must work together to accomplish this task and communicate their interpretations of the exhibitions before proceeding through the hunt. Maximum group size is 50 for this program. Offered seasonally, this program is great for multi-age learners.
Pin Money and Cash Crops – Tour the haying, lumbering, ice harvesting, maple sugaring and Farnsworth’s General Store exhibitions focusing on ways self-sufficient families competed and survived economically in rural Maine during the Industrial Period.
The Folk on the Farm- Tour of the Maine Experiment Station Barn including the Kitchen, Parlor, Bedroom, General Store and Folk Art exhibitions. This program illustrates the roles individual members played within the family and includes examinations of division of labor by gender, family traditions, seasonal practices, cultural values, food and clothing trends; giving children a deeper understanding of the differences in day to day family life between today and the pre-World War II family.
Progressive Maine – Tour the Schoolhouse, Grange Hall, General Store, Parlor, Dairy, Medicinal and Spinning and Weaving exhibitions and discuss community fellowship, the emphasis on the family, women’s roles and rights, the pure food movement, scientific advancement and other social values that dominated Maine society at the turn of the twentieth century.
From Family Farm to Agricultural Empire- Agriculture underwent a major transformation, along with the industrialization of virtually every other industry in the United States. Maine farms that began the antebellum period as small, family-run, and mostly self-sufficient developed into large, family-run, single crop capitalist ventures. Children went off to college or moved to the cities to work in mills. Farms had to adopt new technologies in order to replace lost labor and survive. Those that did not became part of the large, successful farms that did industrialize. Tour the Dairy, Field Crop, Haying, Poultry and Weaving exhibitions to witness evidence of this transformation from family farm to agricultural empire.
Six Simple Machines – Pulley, Wheel, Inclined Plane, Screw, Wedge and Lever. Tour of the simple machines in use in the home and on the farm before the advent of electricity. Students use artifacts to demonstrate how simple machines functioned to make life easier in this time period.
Fiber & Folk Art- Discussions and hands-on demonstrations of spinning wool, weaving, and two Early American Decoration techniques: stenciling and Tole painting. Students participate in a hands-on workshop designed to illustrate the socioeconomic function of these two art forms in agrarian New England pre-industrial society.
School Days, School Days, Dear Old Golden Rule Days– Seasonally, up to 12 scholars go to school in the former Holden South District Schoolhouse and learn what it was like to attend a one-room schoolhouse in 1867. The day includes morning and afternoon lessons, recess and recitations. Children learn to make ink and write with pen and nib, do slate work, and learn about nineteenth century manners and morals. Recess includes playing with a collection of historic toys and playing such games as, “Buzz, Buzz,” or, “Four Corners.”