What do you remember about some of your history lessons from elementary school? There were probably some glossy-paged textbooks, straight-to-VHS (and poorly acted) educational videos and the occasional puppet show or two, if your experiences were anything like ours.
But the kids at Beaver Meadow, Christa McAuliffe and Deerfield Community schools get to learn about the past in a very different, creative and fun way, thanks to a couple of volunteers who are real history nuts.
It’s called the Education Trunk Project, and third- and fourth-graders at the select schools are getting to experience it for the first time. Basically, there are 13 handmade trunks filled with all kinds of historical documents and goodies – and everything is focused on the famous Abbot-Downing Co. and Concord Coaches.
“Originally it was going to just be given to teachers in a ziplock bag, but I think presentation is a big deal,” said Cathy Furlong, a member of the Abbot-Downing Historical Society and one of the two people spearheading this trunk project.
The trunks – which are all handmade by Furlong and Cynthia Maimone, a paraeducator at Deerfield Community School – are about the size of a small cooler, and they’re made out of cardboard and tape. Some black duct tape along the outside gives the look of metal strapping that was common on trunks in the 1800s, and there are leather handles on each side. To top it all off, each trunk has a little nameplate on the front bearing the Abbot-Downing name.
Inside, there are all kinds of artifacts about the history of one of Concord’s most prestigious and beloved companies. And it’s not just fact sheets and flash cards. There’s also a bingo game, a scavenger hunt, Concord Coach stickers and a Concord Coach labeling sheet, where students get to see what every part of the coach is called on one side and fill in a blank sheet on the other side. And, if you haven’t already guessed, everything inside has been made by Furlong and Maimone.
“I like making things,” said Furlong, a former Beaver Meadow teacher.
Right now there are 13 classrooms between Beaver Meadow, Christa McAuliffe and Deerfield Community using these trunks. The trunks fit nicely into a number of different school subjects, but they’re particularly valuable to social studies or history lessons. In Concord, third-graders learn about their city’s history and fourth-graders learn about state history – this project applies to both, and thus the trunks are used by third- and fourth-graders.
There’s also an element that could pertain to a math class. One of the activities gives you the size of the wheels on a Concord Coach and the average speed a coach would move at and students are asked to figure out how long it would take to go from one place to another.
Ultimately, everything in the trunk is designed to teach kids a lot about their local history without boring them to death or putting them to sleep.
“We tried to make it easy for teachers to use, and fun,” Furlong said.
The program is in use in the three aforementioned schools right now, but the hope is to be able to expand in the future – if the support is there.
“We’d love to see this in every fourth-grade class in New Hampshire; that’s our goal,” Furlong said. “We’re still trying to figure that out.”
