Did you know that Historic Columbia offers customized field trips? We have a variety of offerings your students can experience, including house tours, bus tours and walking tours. Many include engaging hands-on activities, and there is always the option of adding on a historic craft or game.
Below are some example itineraries we have created for a variety of schools.
A “then & now” tour of a historic house, a garden tour with our garden staff that included planting a seed, the opportunity to learn about historic uses of plants and create an herb sachet to take home! They ended with lunch on the grounds. This tour helped students achieve both social studies and science standards.
A tour of an antebellum home and a “King Cotton” craft to take home that emphasized the importance of this cash crop in the antebellum era, followed by a tour of the State House grounds later in the day. This tour gave students hands-on and in-situ experiences of the antebellum era, and also allowed the school to stagger their start times while visiting the State House by providing a tour of the grounds for students awaiting their turn inside!
Reading novels that relate to change to show how the city has evolved over time. They visited the State House and took a walking tour of Main Street. They came to our grounds for lunch and then took a tour of an antebellum home. Another school interested in a similar tour also had their students participate in historic games.
We had a variety of schools and grade levels visit the Mann-Simon Site and the Modjeska Simkins House who were interested in learning about African Americans history in Columbia. Many of these classes chose to add on an archeological dig box activity or even an archeology craft! Some of our older classes chose to do a bus tour of Columbia focused on African American history as well, even stopping to see the African American history monument at the State House. One out-of-town class was doing a Civil Rights tour of the South and asked us to help the learn the history of Main Street too, which we were happy to do!
We had AP classes contact us to do a variety of tours including the Woodrow Wilson Family Home, and walking tours of Main Street and the Vista. These tours helped achieve History, Geography and Architecture objectives!
Email education@historiccolumbia.org or call 803.252.1770 x 26 for more information.