Remote Learning activities
While the Campbell Museums are temporarily closed, we have been working diligently to provide meaningful content, preserve the past, and inspire the future during this unprecedented time. We look forward to welcoming you back to the museum in the not-too-distant future! Until then, see the online programming available below.
Take the tour
Ainsley House Virtual Tour activities
The Campbell Historical Museum offers four rotating exhibits based on the universal themes of Community, Homelife, Recreation, and Work. We have turned the physical exhibits into slideshow presentations with accompanying extension activities.
The General Store
Explore the history of General Stores and how they were an important part of small communities.
The general store provided for the material needs of the community. Goods for the family and farm were available. Families could trade their surplus vegetables, eggs, butter, and crafts for the goods they could not grow or make for themselves. Bartering, store credit, or charging were the main methods of payment.
The general store was often the hub of the community, providing a social gathering place, postal services, and community news.
The small community of Campbell had several general stores over the years including Genasci's General Merchandise, the Farmers Union Store, and Blaine's.
General Store Vocabulary Activity
General Store Primary Source Activity
General Store Bartering Activity
Design Your Own General Store
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community
A community is a group of people who come together to solve problems and do things they cannot do alone, for example, build schools and libraries, provide police and fire protection, and make laws. People share their talents, imaginations, religions, foods, and customs to make a community.
In this exhibit you’ll learn how important the General Store was in the Community.
Homelife
Home life is the domestic routine or way of living​.
Be it an Ohlone tule hut, a Spanish adobe, a Victorian mansion, or a tract home, the home is the center of family life. It is the place where people share their life’s hopes and dreams, learn to take part in the everyday tasks, and pass on values and traditions.
Key Ingredients
Key Ingredients explores how Californians have acquired, preserved, and cooked food throughout the decades. Personal narratives and illustrated period kitchens demonstrate how the domestic roles of women have changed from the time of the Ohlone to the present day.
Celebrating Communities
Through Parades and Festivals
Parades and festivals are community celebrations that have been a part of human history for thousands of years. Ancient cave paintings in Spain show a parade celebrating a hunt. For over one hundred years, communities in the Santa Clara Valley have come together to honor their towns with parades, give thanks for a bountiful harvest through festivals, and continue traditions from their native lands. This exhibit will explore how local parades and festivals provide communities with preserved heritage, foster a sense of connectedness, and offer a recreational outlet
Design a parade or festival flyer
Map a parade
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No matter how exhausting the work, people have always made time for recreation, to renew their spirit, refocus on life, and build community through socialization.
Everyone has to work to survive. The Ohlone Indians took care of oak trees so they could harvest acorns. The Spanish and Mexican settlers grazed cattle on their large ranchos, the pioneer settlers grew grains and many people around this area grew fruit and worked in fruit drying yards and canneries.
Connecting a nation: the History of the United States Postal Service
The history of the United States Postal Service (USPS) is rooted in a single, great principle: that every person in the country- no matter who or where - has the right to equal access to secure, efficient, affordable mail service.
As it expanded, our postal system drove major advances in technology and transportation, binding the nation together from coast to coast. The men and women of the USPS still maintain one of our most vital infrastructures, affordably connecting us to each other and delivering valuable resources, no matter the distance.