Winterthur – June 12, 2008

This morning we traveled to Winterthur in Delaware. This museum is the old DuPont estate. This is a very beautiful place and would be a great place to take children for a field trip if you could. I have been to many different educational programs where they run you through a lesson that is offered by the establishment , and I can honestly say that this place had the best one. I learned ways to help teach my students about the economy of the colonial days by having them roleplay some situations regarding accounts of a local barter system. The activity that they did with trading the butter for candle sticks and having the studnents document this in their ledger will make this topic much more understandable for my students. I have access to several of the old tools that they used when talking about the clock shop that I think I will bring in and use with my students. I also like the idea of having students make signs for their shops that do not use words, since many people didn’t read in those days. I will do this activity also in my class, especially when we talk about taverns and them being the meeting places of the colonial people such as we learned last year in BosTon. We also did and archealogical activity that is very similar to a T.E.N.S. kit that our school has access to. Now that I have done this activity, I see that it could be very useful in the classroom, and I plan on checking it out next year. 

The lecture that we heard in the morning was very fast paced. It was useful however in the fact that I learned some ideas on how to interpret pictures and use them to greater effect in class. This was a very good choice for a destination on this trip.