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Nancy Jones, Supervisory RangerLongfellow National Historic Site, Cambridge,

Mass.

Looking Through a New Lens:

Interdisciplinary Programs

(even on a small budget)

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Why do something different?

• Directive from above

• Qualify for new funding

• Energize staff

• Attract new audiences

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Home of _______?

What’s your story?Shatter expectations!

Family

War

Pets

Slaves orServants

House

Location

Objects inside

Ghosts

Kids

A place in time

(even some poems!)

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Living HistoryToursActivities (explore, make, measure, perform) Objects (analyze, compare, imagine)Words, Stories & Images

How to Make New Connections?(or accommodate different learning styles, link to other disciplines)

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Living History

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Living History – Interviews

Sylvia Maynard & Concordant Volunteers Mary Smith & Frances Wetherell, Henry Longfellow’s great-granddaughters

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Tours – Behind the Scenes

Toilets, Closets, Attic, Basement

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Objects – House Who lived here?

What happened here?

When was it built?

What kind of building is it?

What’s inside – behind the scenes?

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Cambridge: From the Ground Up

2009

Activities – Architecture Discovery Quest

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Architecture Discovery Quest

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Architecture Discovery Quest

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All are architects of Fate,  Working in these walls of Time;Some with massive deeds and great,  Some with ornaments of rhyme. 

Nothing useless is, or low;  Each thing in its place is best;And what seems but idle show  Strengthens and supports the rest. 

For the structure that we raise,  Time is with materials filled;Our to-days and yesterdays  Are the blocks with which we build. 

Truly shape and fashion these;  Leave no yawning gaps between;Think not, because no man sees,  Such things will remain unseen. 

In the elder days of Art,  Builders wrought with greatest c

areEach minute and unseen part;  For the Gods see everywhere. 

Let us do our work as well,  Both the unseen and the seen;Make the house, where Gods may dwell,  Beautiful, entire, and clean. 

Else our lives are incomplete,  Standing in these walls of Time,Broken stairways, where the feet  Stumble as they seek to climb. 

Build to-day, then, strong and sure,  With a firm and ample base;And ascending and secure  Shall to-morrow find its place. 

Thus alone can we attain  To those turrets, where the eyeSees the world as one vast plain,  And one boundless reach of sky.

Words – Poetry The Builders

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Poetry? Make it new again!

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Curriculum – Make Something!

Created by Medfield middle school students to fulfill social studies class assignment

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Find a stick and hold it at its base vertically, making certain that the length of the stick above your hand equals the distance from your hand to your eye.

Staying on ground level (or on the same contour as the base of the tree), move away from the tree while sighting the trunk base above your hand.

Stop when the top of the stick is level with the top of the tree. You should be looking over your hand at the base of the tree and, moving only your eyes, looking over the top of your stick at the top of your tree.

Measure how far you are from the tree and that measurement - in feet - is the tree's height.

http://www.americanforests.org/resources/bigtrees/ http://www.fw.vt.edu/4h/bigtree/height.htm

Measure!! How tall is that tree?

Longfellow American Linden Tree

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Activities –Japanese Cultural Day

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Compare !! How does it work?

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Thank You!

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