Today we took the magic school bus to Sturbridge Village circa 1790 to 1840. Two hundred acres of prime field trip land! I would love to bring kids here, but since that’s not going to happen in my present employment on the lone prairie, I’m thinking about how I can use what I’ve learned to bring Sturbridge Village to them. First, I really was impressed by the carding mill. I had never seen a water power mill configured this way. I got some good pictures, and thought that I could probably explain using the pictures about how it worked. Then one of the ladies who helped us cook told me about the OSV website. The website is amazing and has so many teacher friendly sites and links. There are animations of the mills and explanations of how they work. So, now the kids can see how the mills worked! Here’s the link for the mills page:
http://www.osv.org/explore_learn/waterpower/
The site is osv.org. There are tons of resources. The primary documents links are really super, too. The primary documents had the docs, transcriptions, curator notes, lesson plans and background information. Definitely a great day and a worthwhile site to keep track of.
Dinner was wonderful. Fun, too!
- Ma and Pa Kettle at the OSV
