Our Museum in Outreach: Urbanna Oyster Festival Participation

Working with over twenty student groups formed from six schools, we built our presentation around the outside of the oyster, the shell. The kids learned about local craftsmen who mixed the ground shells with local clay, water and sand to form bricks. These bricks became a viable building material here in colonial Middlesex County.  The students learned about the historical buildings in the county that are still standing built with these hand-made bricks from the 1700s. They also experimented with hands on learning with grinding shells, molding clay into bricks, and building walls with the finished bricks in patterns utilized by colonists.