Tag Archives: Summer Camps

Is it really all fun and games?

By Savannah Lore

I have come full circle in my time working the Wornall-Majors Summer camp. I have worked a full camp though it was parts and pieces of different camps. Today’s theme was Frontier Living. It was all about things people had to do and make to survive on the frontier. We did chores and activities like butter making, candle making, weaving, dance games and rope making.Caroline and Esmae

Here are some of our campers making butter. Some silliness is required to making very long task enjoyable.

So, a little about what I learned. From my entire experience, I have noticed a few things about interpreting history with children. The first is that doing interpretation is hard. Very Hard. Some of the times, I could just tell that they did not care. Either they got sidetracked by the activities or the just thought it was boring. And itt was hard to tell exactly what activity they would find interesting. I think it is also hard to talk seriously when they are doing projects that are a lot of fun. One day we had a presenter talk about the Underground Railroad, I think the presenter was good but the kids had to sit and listen without a craft to do. So, they lost focus easily. I think that the group also effects what they listen to or what they like because some times they do not focus or need more information. (We had young kids aged 6-12, some of the younger ones had way shorter attention spans.)

The second thing is I found it very hard to make something they thought was only one way but inform them of another idea. The first day was all about Native American cultures and I found myself wanting to talk much more seriously and at length about somethings that I thought needed to be explained to them, like why we use Native American and not “Indian.” This was also the only day that did not have a presenter (for scheduling reasons and other difficulties) and I think that would have given us a chance to talk more about the history of Native Americans and their culture. I think that this is not the problem of the program but a difficulty with interpreting history with children. I have also saw problems about teaching sensitive subjects like Native American culture. I think it is hard for the kids to understand that this isn’t a costume or a game and these are part of a culture and a people’s identity. So, at times, I can see that kids will unintentionally take the activities to that cultural appropriation line when we are trying hard to get them to respect and understand a culture.

The main lesson here is that it is very hard to get children to understand and focus on the history you are interpreting and making them respectful towards that information.

Playing around in camp and with tours…

By Savannah Lore

As I write this, we have finished our second day of the last session of the Wornall-Majors Summer camp. The theme of day two was Western Expansion and we talked to the kids about people in the 19th century traveling to the western United States. This was a great theme for the Alexander Majors House Museum as Majors’ history is so ingrained in this topic. We did activities that explained how people traveled and why. We also had presentations about how people lived in this period and how certain things were made. One of the favorites was the 19th century toy presentation, which offered the kids a chance to play with replicas of period toys.

toypresentation (Pictured is the toys brought by Jay Clasen of Friends of Missouri Town, who is demonstrating a toy in the right hand corner.)

This was a great way to get them to understand what toys looked like and how much of toys in this period was easily made, but still fun. This allowed us to go into an activity about making your own toys if you had to move west and left your toys behind (If you were lucky enough to have these kinds of toys or a lot of toys.) We made corn husk dolls and dressed them in period clothing.

Also as I write this, I have finished the first draft of my tour script. I wanted to talk a little about what I did with the content of the script in this post. The script for me was a challenge. I decided that I would create a master guide. A script that could be the go-to for a guide if they needed to know anything about the house. It was written in a narrative style to help guides talk about the information even if they could not include everything in the hour long (or half hour in some cases) tours. (Every tour is different.) I focused on two majors things: how the Majors lived in the house and how Majors could have the house built. This is to have multiple ideas without it seeming disjointed. The family history, Majors’ history and 19th century history is throughout the script to help form connections to the information without being repetitive. This means using the Majors and the enslaved African Americans as the focus to direct the content and tell a great story to engage the visitors.

I still have a few days of camp and more edits to make on the script. What I have so far informs what I know of public history. I hope I am explaining history, which is complex and varied, to people and to children in a easy way, either quickly for tours or clearly for children.