The American Centuries website is unique in many design features that facilitate successful use by K-12 educators and students. It includes a large library of primary resources, curricula, and interactive student activities presented in age-appropriate, user-friendly formats.
All the content material throughout the website can be searched from the Search/Find page or by using the search field located in the header of each page.
The Online Collection
American Centuries features a searchable digital collection of approximately 2,000 objects and transcribed document pages from the Memorial Hall Museum and Library collections of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association. Museum staff created interpretive labels for all items in the online collection in consultation with teachers, school librarians, and nationally recognized scholars. A zoom feature encourages close looking and study of individual artifacts.
Turns of the Centuries Exhibit
American Centuries exhibits include one exploring three past “turns of the centuries” — 1700, 1800 and 1900. Each “Turn” focuses on an important benchmark in American history: the Colonial period; the Federal period; and the Progressive and Colonial Revival period. Students can explore five themes in each “Turn” or time period: Native Americans, African Americans, Newcomers (settlers, and immigrants), the Land, and Family Life.
Activities
American Centuries offers a menu of interactive activities. They are fun ways of exploring the past while learning about American history and gaining skills in historical thinking and analysis. Activities focus on primary sources and include contextual interpretation.
Dress Up: What Did People Wear? details the clothing of different historical periods.
Magic Lens is an interactive experience that reveals the contents of old documents.
First Person Oral Histories enables students to encounter history firsthand through stories told by people who lived and made it.
Tool Demos: How Did They Use That? enables students to view video demonstrations of early American tools as they were used.
Historic Places: Explore Where People Lived offers an interactive map to African American sites in Deerfield and accompanying information, and an exploration of New England architecture.
A collection of essays written by PVMA staff explore themes and topics relevant to American and New England history in general and Deerfield, Massachusetts in particular. They vary in length and reading level – some appropriate for students and others written for an adult or even a scholarly reader.
This is a selected set of information about people, places, and events in American history within a New England context. Entries can be viewed in alphabetical or chronological order and either in their entirety or by category. Some entries include portraits or photographs.
Topic Sets
Topic Sets are collections of items gathered together from throughout the website to illuminate a topic or event. Each set links to a variety of related items: artifacts and documents from the Online Collection, interactive Activities, Lessons, Exhibits, Events and People. If you have a topic that you’d like us to create a Topic Set about, please contact us with your idea!
Lessons on the site have been developed by K-12 educators in collaboration with PVMA staff to provide access to the PVMA collections. A team of Massachusetts educators, curriculum specialists, and Museum staff created full curricula using primary sources on the American Centuries site as well as worksheets and other materials. Lessons and curricula are searchable by topic, era, and keyword using the Search|Find page.
We hope you enjoy our site. Please feel free to use the Contact Us page to tell us your reactions and suggestions.
Visit PVMA’s Deerfield Teachers’ Center website for additional resources, including information about programs for educators and students.