The Lexington County Museum currently offers 13 hands-on historical experiences that allow children to step back into time.
These programs last about an hour with the exception of the Native American program, which is a two-hour program.
Group Programs are offered during the following days and hours throughout the year. Up to two successive one-hour tours may be done by each group during a day:
Days: Tuesday through Friday
Times: 9:30 am – 10:30 am
11:00 am – 12:00 pm
1:00 pm – 2:00 pm
2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Please contact the Visitor Services Coordinator at 803-359-8369 for more information or to set up a tour.
Thanks to the Cultural Council of Richland and Lexington Counties, these programs are offered free of charge.
The programs offered include:
Historical Pastimes
Early Games
One Room Schoolhouse
Early Farm Life
Colonial Home Crafts
Life in the “Big House”
The Kitchen
The Loom House
Weaving and Weaving Games
The Quiltmaker
Early Christmas Crafts
Historical Story Time
Historical Pastimes
Replica toys, early games, stories, and songs from the 1700s and 1800s help children to learn how children of earlier times enjoyed their leisure time.
Early Games
Children test their skills at such outside games as horseshoes, jump rope, and some Native American games from the 1700s and 1800s.
One Room Schoolhouse
The schoolmaster, dressed in period style dress, teaches reading, writing, and arithmetic. Spelling bees, writing on chalk slates, writing with quill pens, and playing early recess games show children what a typical school day was like 150 years ago.
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Early Farm Life
Children enter the world of a nineteenth century farm child in this program. Using authentic tools, children plow, rake, hoe, plant seeds, and build a scarecrow in our picturesque farm setting. Sorry there are no animals, however.
Colonial Home Crafts
Within the historic Lawrence Corley Log House, built around 1774, children learn about life in the Colonial era in the backcountry by seeing furniture, quilts, dishes, and eating utensils. They see a spinning demonstration, use cotton cards, and a “knitty-knoddy,” after which they dip candles and take home the finished product.
 Life in the “Big House”
The John Fox House, constructed around 1832, provides the backdrop for this program. Guides point out various everyday items in the antebellum era such as the bed warming pan, the spittoon, the chamber pot, the rope bed, and much, much more. Children then return to an activities room and get to experiment with replica items that they have just seen. Most children who experience this program can go into any museum house of the same time period and feel at home while being able to know how everyday objects were used.
The Kitchen
Everyone loves the kitchen, especially the John Fox kitchen from the nineteenth century. After seeing the kitchen and learning how certain items were used, they proceed out into the kitchen yard and inspect all of the outbuildings used for preparing a meal. Children even get to see a historic privy. The activities in the yard include butter-churning, corncob shucking, using a coffee grinder, and much more. Teachers and parents will be given a short list of food items needed to do this tour, which can be found at any grocery store.
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 The Loom House
Children go into a fully outfitted loom house with spinning wheels and a loom. They are shown how these items are used. Children get to experience the use of cotton cards, picking seeds out of cotton, and even weave on little individual lap looms.
Weaving and Weaving Games
This is a fiber arts program for younger children. The loom is explained and demonstrated in the museum loom house, after which the children engage in paper weaving, potholder weaving, and daisey loom weaving according to their abilities. They end the program by playing related games to the sound of early weaving songs.
The Quiltmaker
This is a program in which children see quilts, learn about early quilt patterns, and themeanings behind the patterns. A quilt story is read while the children design their own quilt patterns with paper and crayons.
Early Christmas Crafts
This tour is given for only a few weeks in December. The John Fox House circa 1832 is decorated with period decorations which the children are shown as they look through the house. After the tour, the children make these same early decorations such as popcorn strings, pomanders, and gum drop trees which they are allowed to take back to the classroom. This program is a most memorable Christmas experience!
Historical Story Time
This program is offered in the summer. Various classic stories as well as historical and Native American stories are read.
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