Price: $5.00/student
Length: Varies
Location: Wilmington, Delaware
Old Swedes Historic Site can accommodate up to 80 students (40 per day) over a two-day period at $5 per student. They can customize your trip to meet your needs. They ask that you pair your students up before you arrive at on site. Unfortunately, Old Swedes Historic Site is not handicapped accessible. Students can eat lunch on-site, indoors or outdoors, and 18th century games are available to play during the lunch period (upon request).
Pick 3 stations that fit your curriculum:
Can You Dig It?
Archeological Excavation Site (outside—tent available)
Essential Question: How does the work of archeologists help us understand the past?
- Introduction question: If someone looked through your trash today, what would it say about you?
- Learn what archeologists do and why.
- Learn about the actual archeological dig conducted at Old Swedes.
- Student simulate archeologists’ work. Participate in a simulated dig.
- Students excavate artifacts from the 18th century, process artifacts, analyze the data.
Breakfast at the Hendrickson House: A Child’s Life Revealed Then and Now
Essential Question: How has a child’s life changed over 300 years and why?
- Students dress as the Hendrickson children.
- Students engage in children’s morning chores before breakfast.
- Students enact 18th century table manners.
- Students enact behavior in the presence of adults.
- Discuss the difference between then and now.
Where There’s a Will There’s a Way (4th grade and older)
Essential Question: How does a primary source help us understand the past?
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Pairs examine original 1722 will of Andrew Hendrickson.
- Students discover the Hendricksons': What changes have occurred in schools over the centuries and why do you think this is?
If These Stones Could Talk: Find the Untold Stories
Essential Question: What untold stories does this burial ground have that helps us understand what people had to endure through the centuries so we can enjoy our lives today?
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Read Aloud Hornbooks and Inkwells.
- Discuss school rules from The School of Manners.
- Activity: make a horn book, write with a quill pen, matching game.
- Take home a copy of school rules.
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Students work in small groups to discover people from the past who struggled.
- Students engage in puzzle making, searching the burial grounds, read untold stories, and creatively share what they learned with the whole group.