Active learning is the foundation of Moore Museum’s education programming.  Students do not merely follow tour guides past glass showcases as one traditionally envisions a museum.  Instead, students are actively engaged in activities which promote a deeper level of understanding.  They fetch water in wooden buckets and do laundry on a scrub board, to discover the challenges of settler life.  Students make rag rugs from scrap materials to explore the sustainable lifestyle of the settlers.  They make food to bake in the wood stove to learn how settler families lived. They visit with the settlers in their homes and attempt cursive writing with quill pens in the one-room schoolhouse.

This experiential form of information gathering plays a valuable role in the social studies inquiry process.  Moore Museum programs are especially beneficial in connection to the continuity and change concept of social studies thinking.  As students interact with first-person “pioneer” interpreters in historic buildings, surrounded by artefacts, they are able to compare various aspects of their lives to those of early settlers.

Moore Museum programs are a valuable resource in meeting the expectations of The Ontario Curriculum in Social Studies, as well as in other areas, including:

• Environmental Education (2017) including sustainable living and the impact of the environment in a different time

• The Kindergarten Program (2016)

• The Arts

• Science & Technology

Connections to the curriculum are noted for each program.

Many programs are designed for use with grade 3 Social Studies Heritage and Identity:  Communities in Canada, 1780 – 1850.  Additional curriculum connections also enrich the experience to make these suitable for split gr. 2/3 and 3/4 classes.  For example:

Grade 2

• Drama B 1.1 role playing
• Science and Technology Understanding Life Systems 3.3 – ways animals are helpful to humans

Grade 4

• Science & Technology – Understanding Life Systems: Habitats and Communities 3.10 – human dependence on natural habitats

There are also active living components to our programs, including being physically active through outdoor work activities during “Busy at Home”, or through outdoor games with “Childhood Memories”.