Elementary School Program for Centennial School

This 90 minute program provides a hands-on experience for students to understand how their ancestors lived at the beginnings of our nation in the late 1700’s-early 1800’s. The students get the
opportunity to understand what life was like before the availability of electricity – with no indoor plumbing, no refrigeration, no TV or devices etc.

Students get to participate in food preparation and simple first aid practices and then sample food from a colonial recipe – scones (small pancakes) and spiced apples prepared in our open hearth
fireplace. They also experience how difficult it was to pump water from a well, take a bath in a simple tub and experience food storage in our 18th Century Root Cellar.

The program begins with a slide program of “before and after” photos showing the dramatic changes that have occurred in the local area in the past 100+ years. This is followed by a tour of the house focusing on everyday living including the making of clothes. During the tour, the students get to meet Abraham Lincoln and learn a little about his early life before his becoming President. The tour ends observing a display of early Warminster schools dating back to the mid-1700’s. The students get a word problem to solve when they return to school taken from Warminster student, Thomas McDowell’s 1775 cipher book.

STEM Program Using The John Fitch Story and Steam for Centennial Middle School Students

This program is designed to encourage students to pursue STEM careers and is primarily conducted in the classrooms at Log College Middle School and Klinger Middle School by a representative from the John Fitch Steamboat Museum and the schools’ Technical Education teachers. The students first learn the importance of STEAM in generating most of our electricity using a
demonstration model steam power plant and U-Tube videos.
They are then assigned the project of designing and building model steam boats that they “race” in a capped rain gutter filled with water as seen below.

The program includes an essay contest with the top essay from each of 7 classes winning a cash prize provided by the John Fitch Steamboat Museum. The best teams from each of the two Middle Schools then visit the John Fitch Steamboat Museum to learn about the inventor of the world’s first commercial steamboat that forever changed transportation.

Finally, the two schools compete with their steamboats to see who will win the trophy for that school year. The Craven Hall Historical Society treats them to a pizza party to end their visit.

Nancy’s Spring Tea

A program that is no longer offered at Craven Hall, our last Spring Tea took place on Sunday, April 28th 2012. The ladies in attendance enjoyed tea sandwiches, scrumptious sweets, great conversation and of course, numerous varieties of tea at this well-loved event. Many special prizes were raffled off, and a visitor or two from the past made a showing at this year’s tea, which was held, as always, at the historic Craven Hall property