These lesson plans/activities have been designed for schools or for parent/child family activities to enhance visits to Howell Farm and the Charles Fish Barn.

The plans help teachers and parents utilize Howell Farm and this website as an educational resource.  Actual visits to the Farm are the best way to gain an understanding of late 19th and early 20th century family farming but other resources can be used to develop this understanding even further.  We hope that school groups and families that visit the Farm can use these lessons to develop deeper understandings and schools or families that cannot visit the Farm can use the lessons also.

The lessons are matched to specific New Jersey State education standards and emphasize both learning about farming and the need to preserve objects and documents in order to help us understand our past.  Each lesson contains information for the teacher/parent and a student packet that can be downloaded using Adobe Reader and reproduced for student use.

Ideas for additional lessons or suggestions to improve the lessons presented are encouraged and can be sent to our webmaster.  If you find these lessons helpful we would appreciate hearing about this also.

Lesson 1:  Learning from historical documents about the type of farming for which the ca1850 Charles Fish Barn was the center of activity.  
Teacher information
Student Packet

Lesson 2: Learning from four historical documents how farming was done by the Fish family in the early 1870s.
Teacher information
Student Packet

Lesson 3: Learning about the English style structure of the Charles Fish Barn.
Student handout - Information and labeled diagrams on the barn and its structure
Teacher information and student worksheet

Supplemental Information - Information sheets on the Fish family and farm about 1850.  There are four sheets in the packet covering the following topics - the family and hired workers, livestock, crops, and farm machinery.