The Concord Museum's diverse education programs reflect Concord's rich social, political, cultural, literary, economic, and natural history and appeal to a broad range of audiences.

Public Programs
The Museum is open year round and offers a wide variety of programs for adults, children and families. Public programs include classes, workshops, concerts, walking tours, gallery conversations, lectures, and symposia. Family activities consist of "Family Sampler Sundays;" a series of tours for young children; and special vacation and summer programs. The Museum's "Be Our Guest" program provides free admission to residents of area towns on winter weekends. Consult the Calendar of Events for a complete offering of this season's public programs.

School Programs
Enrich your classroom curriculum with a framework-friendly, hands-on program at the Concord Museum. An enthusiastic staff of experienced educators provides programs for ten thousand students a year from diverse communities across New England and beyond. The extent of the Museum's collection allows a range of school programming from Native American to the nineteenth century. All programs, with the exception of Colonial Cooking, expose students to a museum experience appropriate to the time period they are studying. Programs are two to three hours in length and, with the exception of Colonial Cooking and Relive 1775 are available from September to November, and January to June. Museum educators are pleased to work with classroom teachers to provide the museum experience they are looking for.

The Concord Museum welcomes students, their teachers and homeschoolers for curriculum-based learning experiences that connect artifacts with people, places and ideas.

The Museum's collections span Native American, Colonial and 19th-century life and serve as a visual classroom. Other engaging activities include historical detective work, problem solving, role playing, tactile learning and critical thinking.

New! "The Life, Work and Legacy of Henry D. Thoreau" for grades 6-12.

In-house programs are designed to better a student's understanding of a particular time period by closely examining different aspects of everyday life. The programs involve students in an investigation of the Museum's collections by connecting artifacts with people, places, and ideas. Programs can include hands-on activities, role playing, living history performances, walking tours, and visits to specific sites in Concord, both natural and man-made. The education staff of the Museum is also willing to work with teachers to tailor programs to an existing school curriculum. Most programs are approximately two hours in length.

Native American Programs:

Students identify "basic needs" through a discussion of what they would need for a camping trip to the wilderness. In small groups, students investigate how Northeast Woodland Indians met their basic needs. Students will:

• Visit the Establishing Concord Gallery in the Museum
• Participate in a hands-on investigation of 4,000 year old stone tools
• Construct dioramas showing the difference between Native American and Colonial land use
• Use Native American technology to grind corn, cook and taste nokehick and drill a hole to make a shell necklace

Native American games are added to the activities listed for Native American Lifeways I.

How can we learn about a civilization that left no written records? Assuming the role of an archaeologist students divide into small groups to:

• Visit the Establishing Concord Gallery in the Museum
• Participate in a hands on investigation of 4,000 year old stone tools
• Undertake a "shoe-box" dig, tabulating and analyzing their finds
• Share their finds with a museum educators and their group

Colonial Programs:

In a setting evocative of a colonial home, students gather around a roaring fire to:

• Discuss how a colonial family obtained, preserved and prepared food
• Use the technology available to colonial housewife to prepare gingerbread, applesauce and rose wafers, mull cider and churn butter
• Make herbal sachets to take home
• Taste and discuss the results of their labor

Students define a community and give examples of communities they belong to. Using a floor map and models they "build" a colonial town, using Concord as an example, and identify communities of importance to the functioning of a colonial town. In small groups, students investigate the role, work and contributions of craftsmen in a colonial community through:

• A hands-on artifact investigation
• A discussion of shop structure from apprentice to journeyman to master craftsman
• Assuming the role of an apprentice to create a pierced tin plate
• Visiting the Museum collection to see the work of colonial craftsmen

Students identify the "Colonial Period" and share their existing knowledge with a Museum educator. In small groups, students investigate colonial life through:

• Working with a Museum Educator dressed appropriately for the period to examine colonial clothes
• Assuming the role of an apprentice to create a pierced tin plate
• Participating in "Object Unwrap," a hands-on artifact activity
• Investigating the Museum's colonial galleries and period rooms

Colonial dance is added to the activities listed in Colonial Sampler I

Pre-Visit materials are sent out with booking confirmation

Using Pre-Visit materials researched from primary sources, students become members of Concord families involved in the events of April 19, 1775. At the Museum, students:

• Introduce themselves in character
• Use the Museum Collection to familiarize themselves with their town and the issues facing them
• Visit the North Bridge to discover their participation in the events of the day
• Meet a living history interpreter to discuss the impact of the day
• Are presented with a documented 1775 dilemma
• Discuss the dilemma in Town Meeting
• Compare their resolution with that made in 1775

Book this program through Elizabeth Chinian at The National Heritage Museum: (781) 861-6559

The Concord Museum and National Heritage Museum in Lexington collaborate to provide students with the opportunity to visit the towns involved in the events of April 19, 1775. Students participate in a one-hour museum experience at each site. The following questions are addressed at each site:

• Who and what made up a colonial community?
• What brought the citizens of Lexington and Concord to the point of armed conflict?
• Why did it happen here?

Nineteenth-Century Programs:

Using objects once owned by Henry D. Thoreau and words written by and about him, students are challenged to explore his life, ideas and legacy as they:

• Make a journal and use it to record their Museum experience
• Share passages from Thoreau's journal
• Visit the Thoreau Gallery to examine his belongings for clues about who he was
• Examine and record the natural world using Thoreau's methods
• Construct a model of the house at Walden Pond
• With Thoreau's desk as a catalyst for dicussion, examine Thoreau's impact on the world and use a floor map to chart his influence on the writings of Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Pre-Visit materials are sent out with booking confirmation

Using Pre-visit materials from the Museum students assume the role of 19th-century Concord residents to:

• Examine how reform movements touched townspeople's lives
• Use maps and visuals to discover the physical changes taking place in town
• Meet Mary Merrick Brooks, president of the Concord Female Anti-Slavery Society
• Participate in a meeting of the Society to discuss their response to the upcoming return of a runaway slave to the South
• Learn the fate of the slave and Concord's response

Henry Thoreau is recognized as a writer, poet, naturalist, teacher and philosopher. The largest collection of his belongings is on display in the Thoreau Gallery at the Concord Museum. Young students study his life and legacy as they:

• Use the Museum's Thoreau Gallery and a puzzle activity to investigate the many aspects of his life
• Meet Mrs. Emerson, a friend of Mr. Thoreau, who has many stories of Mr. Thoreau to share
• Visit a model of his Walden house, furnishing it and listening to some journal entries from his stay
• Take a "field trip" through the Museum
  OR
• Use the technology available to Mr. Thoreau to survey and map a piece of land

Tours

Enjoy a guided Gateway Tour or let us design an experience to match your student group's interest and grade level.  Focused tours explore Colonial Concord, Concord's Role in the American Revolution, The Town of Emerson and Thoreau, Concord's Literary History, and Women in Concord's History. Guided tours are usually one hour in length.

Rates:  $5 per student Kindergarten grade 12; $7 per college/adult student

In addition to a guided experience in the Museum galleries, at an additional fee, tours can include:

• The fourteen-minute Exploring Concord film
• Living history presentations in which costumed interpreters engage and challenge your group in lively conversation
• Hands-on activities related to focus of the tour
• Walking tours into the center of town and/or Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
• Step-on guide service

To find out more about our student group tours, to make a reservation or for itinerary assistance email: grouptours@concordmuseum.org with your contact information, including name, address and phone number and a preferred date, or call the Group Tour Coordinator at (978) 369-9763. The Concord Museum is open year round, is climate controlled and has front door bus parking convenient to Concord Center and major highways.

Class Size: Maximum 30 students per unit. Minimum 12 students per unit (Music 20 students per unit). Units can be combined to accommodate large groups.

Curriculum Materials: Curriculum materials related to each unit will be sent with the confirmation of each reservation. Follow-up activities will be distributed during the Museum visit.

Teacher Workshops
The Concord Museum is a certified PDP (professional development point) provider and as such will be offering workshops throughout the year. In addition to the scheduled workshops, the Museum's education staff will develop workshops to meet specific curricular needs. Please call the Museum for information and dates.

Museum programs are funded in part by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a federal agency, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency that supports public programs in the arts, humanities, and sciences.

Home