A dozen heirloom gardens add another dimension to your museum experience.

Focused Field Studies are a special offering at Genesee Country Village & Museum teacher-developed and student-tested, they provide an immersive experience for your students and allow you to direct attention to specific topics that coordinate with your curriculum plan.

When you choose a themed Genesee Country Village & Museum Focused Field Study, you’ll receive a copy of the study guide especially developed for that topic and arranged to provide you maximum flexibility in customizing your use of the museum as a learning environment. Guides are available in paper editions and electronic format. Each includes pre-visit activities to prepare your students for their field experience as well as post-visit activities for use as follow-throughs or as extensions. An historic context helps set the stage, and a topical bibliography of books, magazines, videos, and Web sites facilitates further exploration. Each guide also includes a vocabulary list, sample organizers and worksheets for copying as needed.

Focused Field Studies are interdisciplinary and use the resources of the historic village, art gallery and nature center in varying combinations. At the museum, your students will work in small groups with museum staff in settings especially created to facilitate understanding and skill development. Field experiences vary for each focused study but may include doing chores, cooking, working as apprentices, interviewing specialists, drawing and sketching, collecting and analyzing samples, or performing. There are numerous opportunities for collaboration, observation, comparing/contrasting, and reporting out in each unit.

Study guides for seven Focused Field Studies are currently available, with additional guides to come.

Don't forget to use our Educator's Preview Pass for a free visit to the museum in advance of your field trip. Explore on your own or with one of our educators to customize a day that is meaningful to your students.

NEW! Switchel, Cole Cannon and Pudding: Food in 19th-Century America

This interdisciplinary unit uses food—how it was produced, prepared, served and stored—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. Tailored to your specific grade level, the field experiences address ingredients and their sources, cooking and food-preservation technology resource utilization, and relationships between food and culture.

All in A Day’s Work: Businesses and Professions in 19th-Century America

This unit uses a variety of settings to introduce students to ways people made a living in 19th-century America. They spend their morning 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.

In the afternoon, students in small groups interview specialists to find out what training, skills, and tools were needed to pursue jobs—some familiar and some not. Worksheets with suggested questions are provided in the study guide, and the experiences provide plenty of opportunities for post-visit follow-throughs and extensions.

School, Work and Play: A Child’s Life Experienced in 19th-Century America

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 two centuries ago. Students spend time in small groups at the schoolhouse, working as apprentices for a master craftsman and playing a variety of authentic 19th-century games. They use graphic organizers to record their experiences at the museum, and then share, compare and contrast hack at school.

We the People: Government and Civic Responsibility in 19th-Century America

This unit engages students in considering the role of civic leaders in 19th-century America with relevance to our world today Using primary documents and true-to-the-day issues, students engage in role-playing, deliver speeches, become involved in an election campaign, and interview village civic leaders as means for understanding the role of local government and citizen involvement. There are recommendations for using your students’ experiences at the museum as the basis for further classroom discussions and activities as well as community projects.

Crafts and Trades in 19th-Century America

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. In the morning, students in small groups visit two trades or crafts to determine the resources and process required to produce an item, the basic needs the item met, and the modes of distribution for each item. In each case, students have opportunities to perform at least one step in the production process they observe, and they use graphic organizers to record their observations for the afternoon and for later sharing with the group. In the afternoon, 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. These experiences are then the basis for compare contrast, research, mapping and related extension activities back in the classroom.

On the Farm: Agriculture in 19th-Century America

This unit addresses the historic context and evolution of farming through the 19th century. Students visit several farmsteads and gardens of different time periods at the museum to investigate what crops and livestock were raised, what tools and types of labor were required, how farm products were used and distributed, and how practices and conditions changed through time. A rich variety of safe hands-on experiences at each location encourages post-visit follow-throughs and extensions analyzing the information students acquire during their visit.

Abolition: African-American Life in 19th-Century America

This unit employs varied settings and techniques of engagement to introduce students to the issue of abolition and its impact on the lives of African Americans living in the Genesee Country. Students explore the working conditions of both slaves and freed men and women, visit the shop of an abolitionist newspaper, listen in as village residents discuss the abolition movement, and connect to stories about the Underground Railroad. Their firsthand experiences at the museum serve as resources for further research, discussion, writing, mapping, and performance activities back in the classroom