Group Size: 40 to 120 students (max of 60 students at each site)
Grades: 3 – 8
Price: Free
Total Length: 2.5 hours (60 – 75 minutes at each site)
Available: Year-round
Part One: A Look Inside the McLellan House
Discover Maine and Portland’s past by experiencing the splendor of an 1801 Portland mansion.
Part Two: Resurgam: The Endurance of Portland, Maine
Visit the Osher Map Library and investigate the destructions, resurrections, and transformations of Maine’s largest city in maps of Portland from the Revolutionary War to the beginning of the twentieth century.
Group Size: 40 to 120 students (max of 60 students at each site)
Grades: 3 – 8
Price: Free
Total Length: 2.5 hours (60 – 75 minutes at each site)
Available: Year-round
Part One: Land, Sea, and Sky
Travel through the Maine landscape on this Portland Museum of Art tour that explores how nature inspires artists.
Part Two: The Pine Tree State
Explore the changes in Maine from the time it was a district of Massachusetts valued largely for its lumber through its transformation into ‘Vacationland’ at the Osher Map Library.
Group Size: 40 to 80 students (max of 40 students at each site)
Grades: 3 – 8
Price: $3 per student
Total Length: 2.5 hours (60 – 75 minutes at each site)
Available: April – December
Part One: Longfellow House Tour
Students are invited to explore the home on a guided tour and examine the connections between Longfellow’s childhood, family life and city life in the mid-nineteenth century, and the poetry Longfellow created.
Part Two: Resurgam: The Endurance of Portland, Maine
Visit the Osher Map Library and investigate the destructions, resurrections, and transformations of Maine’s largest city in maps of Portland from the Revolutionary War to the beginning of the twentieth century.
Group Size: 40 to 80 students (max of 40 students at each site)
Grades: 3 – 8
Price: $3 per student
Total Length: 2.5 hours (60 – 75 minutes at each site)
Available: May – October
Part One: Longfellow Trail
Discover the city that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow knew on this guided expedition through downtown Portland. Using maps and old photographs copied from the archives of the Maine Historical Society, and Longfellow’s poems about his native city, students will search for the buildings and streets that existed in the nineteenth–century city familiar to the poet. In the process students will learn about the Revolutionary War, life in the nineteenth century, the Great Fire of 1866, and the layers of the past that still exist in Portland’s changing urban landscape.
Part Two: Resurgam: The Endurance of Portland, Maine
Visit the Osher Map Library and investigate the destructions, resurrections, and transformations of Maine’s largest city in maps of Portland from the Revolutionary War to the beginning of the twentieth century.
Group Size: 40 to 80 students (max of 40 students at each site)
Grades: 3 – 8
Price: $3 per student
Total Length: 2.5 hours (60 – 75 minutes at each site)
Available: May – October
Part One:Choose between two options (A) which includes a pre-field trip classroom lesson conducted by a Victoria Mansion educator and an extension activity to be done in class by the teacher, and (B) which consists of just the field trip and on-site activity. Option (A) is available at no extra charge.
(A) Gables, Cornices, and Quoins: The classroom lesson covers the architectural styles most common in Maine and teaches students where their familiar landscape fits in a broader context based on politics, immigration, fashion, and engineering. On-site activity is a walking tour of the neighborhood around Victoria Mansion.
(B) The Morse-Libby Mansion and its Neighborhood
Explore Victoria Mansion and the neighborhood around the museum.
Part Two: Resurgam: The Endurance of Portland, Maine
Visit the Osher Map Library and investigate the destructions, resurrections, and transformations of Maine’s largest city in maps of Portland from the Revolutionary War to the beginning of the twentieth century.
Group Size: 40 to 80 students (max of 40 students at each site)
Grades: 3 – 8
Price: $3 per student
Total Length: 2.5 hours (60 – 75 minutes at each site)
Available: February – October
Part One: Choose between two options (A) which includes a pre-field-trip classroom lesson conducted by a Victoria Mansion educator and an extension activity to be done in class by the teacher, and (B) which consists of just the field trip and on-site activity. Option (A) is available at no extra charge.
(A) From Here to There, From Then to Now
The classroom lesson explores travel, beginning in the Colonial era and ending in the late Victorian period, focusing on hotels and transportation. Students are introduced to the technologies that made travel more convenient, frequent, and comfortable in the 19th century. The on-site activity allows students to practice navigational techniques using a paper map.
(B) Travel in the Victorian Era
Learn what traveling was like for Victorians through images of steam transportation and the hospitality business, and by examining the hotel features visible throughout Victoria Mansion and practice navigational techniques using a paper map.
Part Two: “Our Future Lies Over the Water”: Crossing the Atlantic in the Age of Steam
Before steamships, ocean journeys were dangerous, dirty, and miserable, but the great ocean liners of the late 1800s allowed people to cross the Atlantic in relative comfort and safety, uniting the “New World” with the “Old World” in the process. Learn about life on the celebrated ships of the steam age by examining postcards, photographs, maps, and other artifacts from the Morse Ocean Liner Collection.
Group Size: 40 to 100 students (max of 50 students at each site)
Grades: 3 – 8
Price: $5 per student
Total Length: 3+ hours (90 minutes at each site)
Available: Mid-March – October
Part One: Tour of the Tate House
As the oldest historic house museum in the Greater Portland area, Tate House Museum (1755) offers school programs that help students better understand the social, political, economic, and architectural history of pre-Revolutionary, 18th-century Maine.
Part Two: Colonial Maps and Motivations
Visit the Osher Map Library and learn how the competitors for land in present day New England saw and mapped the landscape and its resources.
Group Size: 40 to 80 students (max of 40 students at each site)
Grades: 3 – 8
Price: $3 per student
Total Length: 2.5 hours (60 – 75 minutes at each site)
Available: April – October
Part One: Tour of the Portland Observatory and Eastern Cemetery
The tour of the Portland Observatory (1807) focuses on maritime history, the purpose and importance of the structure, and changes in Portland over the last two centuries. The walking tour of Eastern Cemetery, Portland’s oldest burying ground, teaches your class about Portland’s earliest settlers and points out the markers of some of Portland’s most famous citizens.
Part Two: Resurgam: The Endurance of Portland, Maine
Visit the Osher Map Library and investigate the destructions, resurrections, and transformations of Maine’s largest city in maps of Portland from the Revolutionary War to the beginning of the twentieth century.
To schedule a class visit, please email Renee Keul at rkeul@usm.maine.edu or fill out a visit request form.
