What was it like to be a child in the 1800’s? Investigate the world of the 19th century child through books, games, clothing, toys and photographs of the era. Learn about school, manners, and the changing role of children during the transition from Colonial times to the Industrial Revolution.
19th Century New England Artists
Discover the life of an artist traveling from town to town with his tools of the trade. Learn what clues to our past are pictured in the paintings. Learn about the tools and materials of the itinerant artist and how portrait styles reflect the lifestyle of the subject. Use stories about traveling artists to inspire your students to record their history through portraits and landscape artwork.
This kit includes biographical information on some of the well-known, early New England artists.
Early Schooling
Use materials from the kit to set up your own early classroom corner. Students will love learning the old-time way! Combine this kit with the Games and Toys kit for a great hands-on learning experience. Slates, quill pens, grammar books, reproduction clothing, lesson plans, lunch basket, school bell, diary entries, and books introduce your class to a typical 19th-century school day. The kit includes historical resources for teachers and classroom activities.
From The Land To The Lake
This comprehensive kit offers access to articles, lessons, primary source materials, and other resources supporting a place-based curriculum focused on the historical relationships between people and water in the Champlain Valley. The classroom kit provides copies of primary documents, recent historical texts, maps, activity suggestions, and audio/visual materials which enhance our online presentation. All of the information presented through our web-kit is also provided in the teachers’ manual. From the Land to the Lake is an excellent resource for learning about the geophysical history of the Champlain Valley and how people interacted with the land, and reacted to the challenges the land posed to them.
Games And Toys
Rings, graces, hoops, marbles and other games illustrate leisure activities of the past. Explore the outdoor and parlor games played by 18th and 19th century children. Host a Past Times and Play Times family event, or make recess a special learning time for your students.
Holiday Traditions
Trace the origins of Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa, as well as the traditions, foods, decorations and preparations of the Winter Solstice. Read traditional celebration stories and play holiday games, make ornaments and special seasonal food with your class to learn about the many cultures that make up our state.
Homespun
Your class can use woolen fleece, carders, drop spindles and looms to learn about the production of fibers for household use during the 18th and 19th centuries in Vermont. The kit includes information on flax production, the wool industry, natural dyes, and the impact of the textile industry in Vermont. Reading resources for students include: The Weaver’s Gift, A New Coat for Anna, Charlie Needs a Cloak, The Olden Days, Farmer Boy, The Early Family Home, Early Village Life, Early Settler Activity Guide, The Magic Shuttle and Wool Gathering.
Local Heroes: Vermont’s Role In The Revolution
Discover Addison County’s role in the American Revolution. Meet the local men and women who helped change the tide of history. Visit Vermont as a battleground in our nation’s fight for independence. This kit includes a chronological description of the battles that took place in the Champlain Valley. Each section provides a map and historical references. Students can engage their imaginations while reading books about the local heroes of Vermont, Seth Warner, Daniel Chipman, Ethan Allen, Benedict Arnold, and Ann Story. Reproduction soldiers’ accoutrements and VHS videos are included for your classroom use.
Maps To The Past
Take a trip into the past with historical maps. Learn to read a map and a compass. Follow the paths of geography, geology and transportation through time. Includes reproductions of historic and modern maps. Introduce your students to the many uses and types of maps that surround them in their daily lives.
Mills
Why were mills so important to early Vermont settlers? How do mills work? Where were mills located and what products did they help produce? Learn the answers to these questions and more from the Mills kit. Complete with books, diagrams, and science projects for the classroom, this kit provides in-depth details of how mills worked them. Students will learn about one of the major building blocks of successful New England communities.
Moving To Vermont: The Music Of Immigration
Who came to live in Vermont? Why did they come? What were they like? Learn about the many different immigrant groups that made up the Vermont culture from Colonial settlement times through the 19th century. Recordings, lyrics, instruments, maps, and immigration history make this a fascinating kit for everyone. The Teachers’ manual features sections on the major immigrant groups who came to work and live in Vermont. You will find information on the Yankees, Scotts, Irish, Welsh, French Canadians, Spanish, and Swedes whose skilled labor and inventiveness helped build many of the industries and agricultural resources for which Vermont is still known today. From Child ballads to working songs, WPA essays to dance steps, the story of Vermont’s musical heritage is the story of America.
Classroom activities include examining lyrics for historical content, using maps to trace the roots of ethnic music, and instructions for making folk instruments with your class. Teachers do not need to read music or teach musicology to use this creative and fun kit!
People Of The Dawnland
Use reference books, traditional stories, oral histories, audio and video materials, maps, photographs, artifacts and activities to explore the history and culture of Vermont’s Native Americans. This kit provides a great basis to start your exploration of the Abenaki in Vermont. Teachers reading includes in-depth texts about the history of Native Americans in the northeast as well as works by northern Abenaki authors and scholars of Native American history. Videos, music tapes or cds, posters and natural materials are included to enhance your classroom lessons and displays.
Quilts
A sewing kit, quilt pieces, stories about quilts and quilt pattern books introduce the shapes, patterns and geometry of quilting. Learn how quilts tied families and communities together. Use quilting activities for art projects, math lessons, hands-on design work and fine motor skills.
Settling Vermont: Frontier Life In The Grants
Follow the road Addison County’s pioneers traveled to statehood. Study patterns of settlement and the emergence of Vermont with historic maps. Explore the challenges of “making a pitch” in the Vermont frontier. The teachers’ manual includes in-depth information about day to day life in the Grants. Reproduction clothing and artifacts will help your students visualize everyday 18th century Vermont.
Vermonters In The Civil War
Discover Vermont’s role in the American Civil War by studying the State’s social and political development. Use books, reproduction clothing and accessories, photographs, rosters, and copies of early abolitionist documents to bring this story to life for your class. The kit includes a typical Federal soldier’s sack coat, pants, braces, and shirt, as well as a haversack with utensils and personal items that men often brought from home.
Two teachers manuals and many reference books are included for your classroom use. One manual features the chronology of Vermont’s participation in the abolitionist movement, entry into the war and soldiers’ stories. A separate notebook details what life was like for those left behind in Vermont and includes a searchable index to articles about life on the home front from many of the newspapers at the Henry Sheldon Museum. Both manuals include suggestions for classroom activities.
Westward From Vermont
Westward from Vermont, the Learning Kit grades 4-8 Have you ever wondered why Vermonters went westward? What routes did they take, or what did it cost to get there? Thanks to a grant from the Vermont Humanities Council, the Sheldon’s new Westward from Vermont learning kit will answer these questions and many more. The teachers’ manual in the kit provides a summary of Lewis D. Stillwell’s book, Migration from Vermont. This very informative work covers topics which influenced migration patterns and provides the background needed to discuss what made Vermonters leave hearth and home for the unknowns of the mid-western territories.
An exclusive feature in the kit is the Sheldon’s very own Westward from Vermont board game that leads your class on an actual route that Vermonters took from Vergennes, Vermont to Edwardsville, and Gaylesburg, Ill. The colorful map, presents an artist’s rendition of the northeastern section of the United States that is both attractive and fun to use in the classroom.
Three lively music CDs allow your class to experience some of the music popular in 19th century America. Twenty-three books also offer a wide variety of information about the time period, for different reading levels. From picture books to biographies, diaries to participatory stories, there is a book for every reader in your group.
The kit also includes twenty-three books with a wide variety of content and reading levels. From picture books to biographies, diaries to participatory stories, there is a book for every reader in your group. The book titles and authors are listed below:
Westward Expansion – Allison Lassieur
A Woman’s Story of Pioneer Illinois – Tillson and Quaife
A Day in June – Deborah Roberts Kirk
A Gathering of Days – Joan W. Blos
Daily Life in a Covered Wagon – Paul Erickson
In the Barn – Bobbie Kalman
Duties of Children – J. H. Butler
19th Century Clothing – Bobbie Kalman
Tools and Gadgets – Bobbie Kalman
Pioneer Days – David C. King
Pioneer Life from A to Z – Bobbie Kalman
The Pioneers – Marie and Douglas Gorsline
Visiting a Village – Bobbie Kalman
Johnny Appleseed – Steven Kellogg
Early Farm Life – Lise Gunby
If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon – Ellen Levine
Westward Expansion – Teresa Domnauer
Frontier Living – Edwin Tunis
Log Cabin in the Woods – Joanne Landers Henry
Pioneer Girl: The Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder – William Anderson
Pioneer Girl: A True Story of Growing Up on the Prairie – Andrea Warren
The Illinois Pioneer Period – Genean Stec
The Olden Days – Joe Mathieu
Other activities based on lists of artifacts from the Sheldon Museum present decision-making opportunities, math problems, graphing, spacial relationships activities, options for prioritizing, and new vocabulary words. A featured letter from the Sheldon’s collection provides answers to a crossword puzzle! This kit is versatile and a perfect complement to Common Core Curriculum requirements. Your class will have fun while learning the history of migration from the Vermont.
