Schools

Learning experiences

The NSW Schoolhouse Museum offers pre-booked, hands-on school excursions that immerse students in the past through object-based learning.

Our authentically restored schoolrooms feature historic furniture, objects and images that reveal changes and continuities in schooling, communication and daily life.

Students explore and use objects in context—touching, observing and experiencing them firsthand—to gather evidence, ask questions, make comparisons and draw conclusions. Through authentic, interactive experiences, students identify and describe change over time while developing a deeper understanding of the past .

We offer three programs:

• Stage 1 – School Communication in the Past
• Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 – School Life of the Past
• Stage 2 – Continuity and Change

School Communication in the Past – Stage 1 (2024 HSIE syllabus)

Supporting the Stage 1 2024 HSIE syllabus topic The Way People Communicate Has Changed Over Time, students explore historic objects, images and stories to investigate how school communication has changed over the past 150 years.

Immersed in authentic historic spaces, students use and examine objects including handwriting tools, printing equipment, postal transport, telephones, 3D viewers and projection technologies. They use these experiences to gather evidence and draw conclusions about how and why communication has changed.

Read about a typical visit for School Communicaton in the Past .

Note – This is a re-focused version of School Life in the Past. Using our existing spaces and collection, we now explore the changing technologies of communication in schools, including handwriting, printing, projection, telephones and post.

Students will still enjoy our hands-on activities, with opportunities to experience early writing, printing and 3D viewing technologies. New additions include telephone role-plays and a play-based postal transport activity with a felt map. There’s an option to explore 1950s–60s projection technologies or experience the chatter and laughter of traditional outdoor games.

• Receive a handwritten letter in the mail in anticipation of their visit
• Dip a metal-nib ink pen to write Copperplate – dipping, copying, blotting, dipping
• Write with a genuine slate pencil onto a slate board
• Examine student work created in the era of pen and ink and decorative bookwork
• Hear the sharp ring of a 1940s rotary dial telephone, feel the weight of its handset and slowness of dialing
• Observe telephones over time, from a 1900s crank handle candlestick to 1980s push-button
• Print using raised rubber stamps and a gelatin hectograph that saved time in laborious writing and drawing
• Tap the keys of early typewriters
• Role-play delivering letters between cities and country by mail trucks, steam train, mail cars and horseback
• Respond to the concise two-word commands of dumb-bell exercises
• Experience skipping around a maypole as children enjoyed at displays and community events
• View photographs of the world in 3D through 1890s stereoscopes and 1950s to 70s viewmasters
• Peak into the 1950s and 60s to observe projection technologies that brought the world into classrooms, or
• Play co-operative outdoor games such as ‘fly’, skipping and bowling hoops, laughing and chattering during play.

School Life of the Past – Early Stage 1 (2024 HSIE syllabus), Stage 1 (2012 History syllabus)

Supporting the Early Stage 1 2024 HSIE syllabus topic, People use Stories, Images and Objects to Show Changes Over Time, and the Stage 1 2012 syllabus topics Present and Past Family Life and The Past in the Present, students are immersed in aspects of daily school life of the past.

Students use stories, objects and images to compare daily school life in the past and present. They use changing technologies and remains of the past that show changes over time.

Read about a typical visit for School Life in the Past.

Note – Due to limitations in our spaces and collection, the Early Stage 1 School Life of the Past and Stage 1 School Communication of the Past are quite similar excursions. Schools are advised to plan for one or the other in their excursion program.

Students:

• Experience snippets of 1880s school lessons sitting at long-toms
• Write on slate boards with genuine slate pencils
• Dip an ink pen into a ceramic ink well to write Copperplate
• Engage with historic objects on display and for touching and consider changes over time
• Explore original contents of Globite suitcases
• Use early technologies such as rubber stamps and jelly pads
• Assemble vintage wooden peg or jigsaw puzzles
• Play with early toys such as knuckles, marbles and spinning tops
• Look at early crafts and work samples treasured through generations
• Examine objects used in daily life such as wash basins, lanterns and kettles 
• Enjoy early playground games such as ‘fly’, skipping, quoits and bowling hoops
• Dress in pinafores and sailors’ collars if they wish to
• Skip around a maypole to traditonal folk music
• Practise precision marching or exercises using dumb bells
• Hear the crackle of open fires in winter months
• Compare daily life of the past to that of today.

Continuity and Change – Stage 2 (2012 History syllabus)

Supporting the topic Community and Remembrance, Stage 2 students use primary sources and immersive experiences to investigate the continuities and changes in education from the 1880s to the present. 

Students use changing technologies, compare teaching and learning methods and analyse and interpret sources such as artefacts, photographs and recreated classrooms.

Read about a typical visit for  Stage 2 Continuity and Change.

Students:

• Experience recreated 1880s school lessons and technologies 
• Examine early student workbooks and crafts treasured through generations
• Explore past educational objects and consider changes and continuities
• Write on slates with genuine slate pencils
• Dip an ink pen to write Copperplate and label a map
• Create twisted threads, weaving or knitting as past school crafts 
• Assemble hand-crafted wooden toys as a past manual skill
• Construct a Cuisenaire rod mat to complete number sentences
• Use a gelatin hectograph as an early printing technology
• Practise precision exercises using wands and skip around a maypole
• Play mid-20th century schoolyard games such as skipping and ‘fly’
• Dress in lacy collars and sailors’ collars if they wish to
• Toast bread over the fire in the winter months
• Compare education of the past to that of today. 

Related units of work

Learning experiences at the NSW Schoolhouse Museum support the teaching of content and understandings in the 2024 HSIE K-6 syllabus and concepts, skills and content in the 2012 History K-10 syllabus.

Activities provide enriching first-hand experiences for topics and units such as:

Students with additional needs

Groups of students with additional needs are welcome. We provide a modified program to cater for their interests, needs and abilities. Minimum numbers do not usually apply to these groups. A portable wheelchair ramp and accessible toilet are available. We do not have a changing table or hoist in the accessible toilet.

School anniversaries

The NSW Schoolhouse Museum has rooms representing three different periods in education: 1870s-1900s, 1910s-1940s and 1950s-1960s. An excursion to the Schoolhouse Museum can bring the past to life as part of your school’s anniversary celebrations.