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DAR Museum Portable Education Programs

Katie Cannon, DAR Museum Curator of Education

Do you wish you could be in two places at once? The DAR Museum found a way! Now you don’t have to come to the headquarters building to experience the museum; instead, the museum will come to you. Its Portable Education Programs (PEP) travel across the country to visit schools and chapters.

For schools and children’s programs, the museum offers three PEPs: School & Play, Money & Jobs, and Food & Clothing. Curriculum is designed for the fourth grade, though teachers of other grades have successfully used the materials as well. In School & Play, students work out their arithmetic problems on slates and try games from long ago, like ninepins and ring taw. In Money & Jobs, they sign an apprenticeship indenture and explore the different careers of the 1700s by “working” for shillings and pence. In Food & Clothing, kids experience the labor of making cloth from raw fiber to finished product and put their math skills to the test using recipes from the 1700s.

For DAR chapters and other adult audiences, we offer the PEP called Colonial Household. With it you can explore the skills needed to run a household during the 1700s. Can you identify different types of fabric when you’re doing laundry? This is important because in the 1700s, washing and stain treatments depended on the type of fabric. How about cooking tools—would you know what to do with the kitchen gadgets of the colonial days? Can you identify them all? And what about household expenses—can you calculate how much you would need for the year in pounds, shillings, and pence? These are all skills needed to run a household in the colonial days.

Each program arrives in a sturdy box with handles and wheels. The only cost to schools or chapters is the shipping; generous contributions of DAR members allow the museum to make this program available for no additional charge.

If you are interested in reserving a PEP, please contact the museum at [email protected].