Project Overview

The creation of the “Child Life in the 1830s” exhibit was the culminating activity of Old Sturbridge Academy’s 2021-22 Grade 6 and Grade 7 Exhibits crews. At the beginning of the school year, the students were trained to properly handle and care for artifacts from Old Sturbridge Village’s collections while helping curators perform basic maintenance and environmental monitoring of the museum’s exhibits. Next, students used their research and writing skills to describe and put into context an artifact from the collections. Each student chose and focused on a single artifact, and their work was publicly displayed alongside the artifacts in a temporary exhibit. Next, students chose a theme for a larger, more complex exhibit. The students chose to highlight aspects of children’s lives in the 1830s. The Grade 6 crew focused on the experience of going to school and the Grade 7 crew focused on children’s toys and games. The students chose the artifacts, wrote the labels, built the cases, designed, and then installed the exhibit under the supervision of the museum curators. This exhibit was on display in the David Wright gallery from June – October 2022.