Jamestown Settlement and the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown offer immersive learning experiences for teachers and students to time travel to America’s beginnings in 17th- and 18th-century Virginia.
Throughout the year, teachers and students can discover the shared stories of people and events that shaped early America in person at both museums through dynamic gallery exhibits and interactive living history. Historical interpretation and hands-on education programs connect the dots to help teachers and students understand their relevance today.
Field trips to the museums, outreach classroom programs, distance learning and digital resources enhance learning for students and teachers alike. And, teachers can delve deeper into our nation’s early history and learn methodologies and techniques to bring those stories alive for their students through teacher professional development, multiday immersion programs at the museums and virtual programs. Education programs strive to aid students in building critical thinking, citizenship, collaboration and communication skills.
At Jamestown Settlement, a museum of 17th-century Virginia history and culture, teachers and students can explore gallery exhibits – with artifacts, films and interactives – and life-size re-created settings to learn about the culture of the Virginia Indians who occupied the Virginia landscape for centuries, the arrival of English colonists in Jamestown in 1607 to establish America’s first permanent English colony and the first documented arrival of West Central Africans in 1619, leading to cultural encounters and events that planted the seeds of a new nation.
At the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown, they can embrace the tumult and victory of the Revolutionary period to the dawn of the Constitution and beyond in gallery exhibits with period artifacts, immersive environments and films, including “The Siege of Yorktown,” with a 180-degree surround screen and dramatic special effects. In the outdoor areas, they can wander through a re-created Continental Army encampment to learn about the life of a soldier and take in daily demonstrations on medical treatment, camp life and cooking, and see firings of a flintlock musket. A Revolution-era farm, based on a real-life 18th-century family, engages students and teachers in helping with daily chores in the house, kitchen, tobacco barn, gardens and crops.
Jamestown Settlement and the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown, located near Williamsburg, Va., and open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily except Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s days, are administered by the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, an agency of the Commonwealth of Virginia accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.
For tickets and events, visit jyfmuseums.org or call (757) 253-4838. To book an education program, contact (888) 868-7593 or group.reservations@jyf.virginia.gov.
