STUDENTS LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE AT PILOT DAY CAMP
Poplar Forest Newsletter, Fall 2001

Poplar Forest combined hands-on education and fun at its pilot day camp for young students this summer.

The weeklong camp was part of the long-range plan to offer educational experiences on a small-scale and hands-on basis. The camp was offered in cooperation with the James River Day School in Lynchburg and was available to all students in the area.

Students entering grades, 4,5, and 6 teamed with the professional archaeologists and craftsmen to learn about traditional building methods and restoration, archaeology in the field and in the laboratory, and Poplar Forest’s history.

Whether they were trying to master a transit to take field measurements of an archaeological site or mixing mud with their feet to make bricks the old-fashioned way, the students plunged in enthusiastically.

A brickmaker from Colonial Williamsburg taught students how to make bricks like Jefferson’s workers – starting from scratch and squishing mud between their toes – and how to fashion a kiln.

The next day campers traveled to nearby Virginia Lime Works, an extension of Price Masonry Contractors, which is working on the Poplar Forest wing. Students watched in amazement as limestone was transformed into putty after being heated in a kiln, cooled, and slaked in water. Overseen by a mason and armed with mauls, chisels, and mortarboards, students then plastered walls, pounded mortar, and repointed bricks.

The campers also experienced two days of hands-on exploring with the archaeology staff. In the field they excitedly discovered artifacts as they screened soil from an active dig, and earnestly mapped their finds and the excavation features.

In the laboratory, they cleaned artifacts, cross-mended ceramics, and dated marbles recovered at Poplar Forest.

They also donned gloves to assemble a cow’s skeleton while listening to the laboratory supervisor explain the stories that the silent, white bones tell.

The camp, says W.S. Coursey, the headmaster at James River Day School, was “a true, young scholar’s window into the art and science of historians and archaeologists. When students are actively involved in their learning, they retain over 90 percent of the knowledge associated with that learning experience.”