A typical day at Old York

At the Museums of Old York, we take hearth cooking very seriously

and we can be quite dangerous in the kitchen....

But we also have a lot of fun!

"We made an apple cake and molasses cookies today. It was pretty simple. For the apple cake, we used our hands to mix the batter and since we had apple sauce in it, it was....pretty disgusting!"





-Morgan

Molasses Cookies (makes 2 dozen)

Bowl 1: Bowl 2:
¼ cup brown sugar ½ cup molasses
¼ cup butter 1 egg

Then pour bowl 2 into bowl 1

And add:
2 cups flour ½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp/ salt 1tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. ginger

Roll into balls size of walnuts and then in white sugar and put in Dutch oven.

Bake 12 to 15 minutes.

Laura

Lancy

Morgan and Lancy

Folk Art and Cucumber

The Junior Curator meeting this week was very productive. Even Lancy was surprised at how much work we could accomplish in two hours, and still have fun!



Some people did some research on "new" objects:

Jessie and Richard in the Museum of Colonial Relics room at the Old Gaol.

While others chose to eat a snack ( a healthy one at least):

Katie and Shelly eating a cucumber

Tom Johnson the curator came to check on our exhibit design, corrected some of our findings and suggested more objects.


We are still asking museum visitors to answer our survey about folk art. We will use their answers in our online exhibit. We now have to prepare the first draft for the webmaster.
Wish us luck!

Colonial Children

A few colonial children were seen by Jefferds' Tavern last week....do you recognize any?

Survey

Here is the survey we are giving to visitors this week.
Feel free to email your answers or leave them in a comment!
Thanks,
Allison, Jessie, Katie, Lancy, Shelly.

JUNIOR CURATORS’ FOLK ART PROJECT


The Junior Curators of Old York are preparing an online exhibit on Folk Art. Could you assist us in answering a question.



Do you know what Folk Art is? If you do, please give us your definition. If you don’t, please give us your best guess.



We appreciate your feedback.




Check our blog, www.juniordocents.blogspot.com to see if we have selected your definition, then visit the Old York Historical Society website, www.oldyork.org, to view our exhibit which will be posted at the end of August.

Thanks so much for your interest in our project.

The Junior Curators of Old York

Making Tops at Old York

One day at Old York, Danny, a fellow docent, and I had completed our days activities with another hour until we were done for the day. Zoe, our supervisor, gave Danny and I the idea of making toy tops. We gathered the supplies and started work on sawing the small logs into tops. Then we made pegs for the tops and wedged them into the holes in the middle of the tops. The holes were made thanks to Joe, the man in charge of the Barn construction and his modern power drill. You can see me and Danny making the tops in this picture. We made 8 or 9 tops and had lots of fun.



-Zachary B., Junior Interpreter.

How to make folk art interesting....

At this week's meeting of the Junior Curators, Lancy presented a couple of objects from her home:

We discussed whether the mirror and the cup could be labelled folk art. The cup didn't pass the test because it was mass-produced in Europe. The mirror however was handmade, probably by someone who wasn't trained....could it be folk art?

Then we started brainstorming ideas for the online exhibit. We worked on the introduction part of the exhibit....but we can't show you anything yet. Check the blog next Thursday for more information!

Busy Kids

The past week has been very busy at Old York. Campers ages 8-12 were engaged in a week-long program of activities around the theme of food. Food preparation through the centuries was the focus of the camp, but children also played games, made crafts and dressed up...all this in the 90+ degrees weather!
Here are a few photos of the camp.

Junior educators helped every day. Particular thanks go to Sarah, Emily, Mallory, Lancy, Shelly, Allison and Erin (who wins an award for the Most Dedicated Junior Educator of the Week!).

Mallory and Erin cooling off in the York River