CHILDREN’S DISCOVERY ROOM

Family Friendly

The House of Local History is a family-friendly place. In addition to the History Trail Guide that parents can help their children follow to explore our exhibits, and activities in most sections that engage children, our Children’s Discovery Room is a special space just for kids. Here young people can:

• Play with toys from another era, such as cup and ball, whirligig, game of graces, wooden tops, flip books, cornhusk dolls, paper dolls with period clothing, mechanical banks, and hoops with sticks for rolling them; as well as read children’s books from the 1800s
• Dress up in historically accurate period clothing complete with tricorn hats and wooden canteens for the boys, and drawers, corsets, petticoats, aprons, and bonnets along with dresses for the girls
• Sit at old school desks, and complete work from old lesson books using slates and slate pencils
• Pour through old photographs of children from different eras

You will definitely want to bring a camera!

At parents’ discretion, children ages six and up can happily amuse themselves here while parents explore the exhibit in greater depth, or conduct their own research. Because children learn by doing, they may even gain insight into life in another era and begin to make comparisons with their own life today while they are having fun exploring all the room has to offer.