Tours & Programs for Career Development and Occupational Studies

 

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Career Development and Occupational Studies
The museum offers numerous opportunities for students to compare past and present components of career development and occupational studies. Students can see how the workplace has changed through time by exploring 100 years of trades, businesses and professions represented in the historic village, and they can investigate firsthand the value of work to society and its connection to lifestyle and personal goals. The museum also provides a rich variety of domestic settings in which students can learn about how homes and families were organized at various points in time and how this organization related to resources, economics and technology.

NYS Learning Standards:

CDOS1: Career Development
CDOS2: Integrated Learning
CDOS3a: Universal Foundation Skills
CDOS3b: Career Majors
 

Self-Guided Tours
Self Guided Tours of the Historic Village 
Visit the historic village and take an exciting journey of discovery into the past. History comes alive as students spend time at homes, trades, businesses and public buildings that are most relevant to your curriculum plans and their interests. Use your Educator’s Preview Pass for a free advance visit, and then design a tour on which your students investigate, compare and contrast lives of 200 years ago with their own.
NYS Standards Met: CDOS1
Dates Offered: Mid-May through mid-October, Tuesdays – Fridays

 

Museum Educator-Guided Tours of the Historic Village
Early 19th-Century Lifeways
Students will travel through a century of American life. Compare homes and children's lives from the beginning to the end of the century. Visit with a tradesman who will demonstrate the latest developments in 19th century technology. Find out how early residents relied upon local business to provide commerce and communication.
NYS Standards Met: CDOS1
Dates Offered: Early May and late October, Tuesdays-Fridays
   
Theme Tours
Do you and your students have a particular interest? We can design a tour around a theme, such as architecture, horticulture, kitchens, textiles and trades. Please call us at (585) 538-6822 x216 to discuss your particular needs and interests.
NYS Standards Met: CDOS1
Dates Offered: Early May and late October, Tuesdays-Fridays
   
Pioneer Chore Tour (Grades 7-8 only)
Your middle school students will expend excess energy on this custom guided tour! Select from physical activities, such as building a fence, churning butter, and sawing wood. Watch our tradesmen at work and make a tin ornament. Learn about 19th-century hygiene and make a sweet bag. There may even be time for lessons at the schoolhouse and games on the Village Square. Please call us at (585) 538-6822 x216 to discuss your particular needs and interests.
NYS Standards Met: CDOS1
Dates Offered: Early May and late October, Tuesdays – Fridays (Additional dates available by special arrangement)

 

Focused Field Study
Businesses and Professions in 19th-Century America (Grades 4-8)
This unit uses a variety of settings to introduce students to ways people made a living in 19th-century America. They spend time visiting a family-owned inn for travelers, where they pitch in and help prepare for the next group of guests, and a general store, where they process inventory, sort mail, wrap packages and more to convince the storekeeper that they would make a fine clerk. Students may also interview specialists to find out what training, skills, and tools were needed to pursue jobs – some familiar and some not.
NYS Standards Met: CDOS1, 2
Dates Offered: Fall and Spring
   
Crafts and Trades in 19th-Century America (Grades 4-8)
This unit facilitates students’ exploration of how 19th century Americans met their communities’ needs and wants and how this changed through time in concert with advances in communication, transportation and technology. Students in small groups visit trades or crafts to determine the resources and process required to produce an item, the basic needs the item met, and the modes of its distribution. In each case, students have opportunities to perform at least one step in the production process they observe. Later, students visit village buildings to identify examples of the trades and crafts they documented in the morning and to determine how they were used, by whom and how regularly.
NYS Standards Met: CDOS1, 2, 3b
Dates Offered: Fall and Spring
   
Life in the Burned-Over District: Church and Community in 19th-Century America (Grades 7-12)
This unit will explore some of the various religious groups that made the Genesee Country their home. Students will explore places of worship and learn about what each faith believed, how they were involved in the community, who belonged to the group, and what major forces were shaping the group at the time. Students will participate in an activity or demonstration that illustrates each group’s identity and beliefs. Throughout this experience, students will focus on similarities and differences and how diversity created a vibrant community.
NYS Standards Met: CDOS1
Dates Offered: Fall and Spring
   
School, Work and Play: A Child’s Life Experienced in 19th-Century America (Grades 4-8)
A 19th-century child’s life was a mix of school, work and play – just as a 21st-century child’s life is – but there were differences too. This unit focuses on the activities that engaged children over 100 years ago.
NYS Standards Met: CDOS1, 2
Dates Offered: Fall and Spring
   
Switchel, Cole Cannon and Pudding: Food in 19th-Century America (Grades 4-8)
This interdisciplinary unit uses food as a way to examine 19th-century American life. By participating in food-related activities at a series of homes from different times in the 1800s, students collect information that enables them to consider change through time and to compare and contrast the 19th century with the one in which they live today. Students will participate in a hands-on cooking activity and visit other kitchens to learn about ingredients and their sources, cooking and food-preservation technology, resource utilization, and relationships between food and culture.
NYS Standards Met: CDOS1, 2, 3b
Dates Offered: Fall and Spring

 

Programs for Specific Grade Levels

Exploring Museum Careers (Grades 9-12 only)
Museums offer employment in a remarkably wide variety of areas, ranging from natural/environmental science, information technology, and museum curation to building trades, finance, horticulture, theater, public relations, teaching and more. In this behind-the-scenes guided tour, students have time to talk to several members of our museum staff as they go about their daily work. Designed for students who are forming ideas about their own career paths, the program provides exposure to a work environment in which varied occupations are practiced every day in unique combinations. Please call us at (585) 538-6822 x216 to discuss your particular needs and interests.
NYS Standards Met: CDOS1, 2
Dates Offered: Early May and late October, Tuesdays ~ Fridays (Additional dates available by special arrangement)

 

Seasonal Programs

Home for the Holidays (Grades K-12)
This one-of-a-kind interdisciplinary program traces the evolution of winter holiday celebrations in America through the 19th century, with special emphases on the contributions of various cultural groups. Historic buildings decorated to period are staffed by museum educators who help students understand the cumulative and changing nature of holiday observances. Students are invited to join in holiday activities during their visit. You may opt to have students make a tin ornament of their own by working alongside the village tinsmith for an extra charge.
NYS Standards Met: CDOS1, 2
Dates Offered: Fridays TBD in December

 

Movable Museum

Can't make it to the museum? Let us bring our “Moveable Museum” programs to you. These in-classroom learning experiences are excellent on their own or as a pre- or post-visit experience to enhance the lessons of your field trip.

Museum educators bring touchable, usable objects to your classroom in connection with standards-relevant themed programs specially designed to fit with your curriculum. Programs are designed for small class-sized groups and last 45-60 minutes.
 

19th-Century Fashion (Grades 7-12)
Costuming is an integral interpretive tool at Genesee Country Village & Museum. In this program, we bring you a sampling of 19th-century clothing styles along with explanations of the origins and functions of costume elements. The program can be customized to suit your specific needs and time frame and may be requested in either a lecture format or as a fashion show. Pricing reflects the number of models and program length.
NYS Standards Met: CDOS1
Dates Offered: Year Round
   

History in the Kitchen (Grades 7-12)
A museum cook shows how she uses 19th-century cookbooks, household inventories, diaries, and letters to recreate menus of the past and to understand how people prepared, stored and served their food. She brings receipts (recipes) as well as examples of cookware and other kitchen utensils to illustrate this most “tasteful” approach to learning about the past.
NYS Standards Met: CDOS1
Dates Offered: Year Round
 
The General Store (Grades 4-12)
Armed with 19th-century wares and dry goods for your inspection, our storekeeper introduces your students to this uniquely American institution that gave flavor and personality to 19th-century villages. Your students learn about the general storekeeper’s multifaceted role in the community and how the store contributed to an area’s settlement. Modifiable to meet your students’ particular needs, the program is an engaging way to learn about world wide trade, household and business economics, pricing systems, profit margins and customer service – 19th-century style.
NYS Standards Met: CDOS1, 2
Dates Offered: Year Round
   

The Little Red Schoolhouse (Grades 4-8)
Let us turn your classroom into a 19th-century oneroom schoolhouse. Our museum educator reminds students of the rules of discipline while guiding them through their lessons. They are asked to engage in cooperative learning, practice their penmanship, use a slate and read stories from a McGuffey reader.
NYS Standards Met: CDOS1, 2
Dates Offered: Year Round
   
The Ox-Cart Man (Preschool-Grade 3)
The story of a 19th-century family comes alive as our museum educator brings a cart full of objects for students to see and touch. Based on The Ox-Cart Man by Donald Hall.
NYS Standards Met: CDOS1
Dates Offered: Year Round
   
Quilting (Grades 3-12)
Making a quilt was a way to help keep a 19th-century family warm, and it was also a means for artistic self-expression. Learning about quilts is a way to understand more about 19th-century American life, art, design, communication and even geometry. Our quilter shares 19th-century quilt patterns and demonstrates how quilts are put together. Students learn the importance and origins of quilting and how quilted items were used for a variety of purposes.
NYS Standards Met: CDOS1
Dates Offered: Year Round
   

The Tinsmith (Grades 3-12)
In this inquiry-based program, our Genesee Country tinsmith brings some of his shiny wares as well as the tools he uses to make them so your students can see both process and result. Students are challenged to figure out how this technology was employed to solve specific problems and meet particular needs. The tinsmith also shares insights into his role in early American economies and compares it to that of his 21st-century counterpart – the hardware store.
NYS Standards Met: CDOS1, 2, 3b
Dates Offered: Year Round