Iron County Museum wraps up hands-on school visit season

The Iron County Museum in Caspian closed out another season of school visits with lessons that reached far beyond a standard field trip. Museum Director Kathlene Long thanked volunteers and Education Committee members for helping run a program that served kindergarten through fifth grade, with some years including Pre-K, and tied classroom learning to the county’s own history, work and culture.

The museum’s approach is built around hands-on stations that match what students are studying in school. Kindergarteners rotated through three Aileen Fisher-inspired activities, learned poems and created artwork that was assembled into a handmade book to take home. First graders started with an art scavenger hunt in the Lee LeBlanc gallery, moved to the Baumgartner Pioneer School House to picture the old days, and then spent time in the Native American exhibit learning about Ojibwe heritage.

By second grade, the lessons widened to maps and orienteering, old-fashioned string games such as cats-in-the-cradle, and an introduction to Iron County rocks and minerals. Third graders explored the history of communications by trying Morse code and a ham radio, then turned to logging and logging camp history in the Monigal Miniatures exhibit before finishing with an art project connected to invasive species and pollinators.

Fourth graders learned mining through a dark maze and a cookie-mining activity, then moved into the history of children’s toys and how play has changed over time. Fifth graders split their time between homestead life and lumber camp life, washing clothes on a washboard, grinding flour, churning butter and learning the jobs that kept a logging camp running. The museum said the goal was to keep children engaged while reinforcing lessons they are already meeting in school.

That work takes place on a campus with deep local roots. The Iron County Historical Museum says it is one of the largest outdoor museum complexes in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, with more than 20 buildings, 100-plus exhibits and two art galleries spread across more than 9 acres. The museum says it was founded in October 1962, and that in 1963 Pickands-Mather Company deeded 5.5 acres, including the Caspian Mine headframe and engine house, to create the site. The museum opened in 1968.

The school visits also help keep Iron County’s industrial and cultural history visible to a new generation. The museum says the iron ore industry drove the local economy for nearly 100 years, when 78 mines operated in the county and the last, Sherwood Mine, closed in 1978. Its exhibits include the Baumgartner Pioneer School House, moved to the grounds in 1988, log cabins and the logging camp, all part of the museum’s identity as the Historic Log Cabin Capital of Michigan. In Caspian, that makes the classroom feel rooted in place.