Every spring about 1,200 fourth grade students, their parents and teachers participate in a one-day visit to the LaSalle County Historical Society Museum Complex. Retired teachers and other volunteers present school lessons, rules, and discipline of a hundred years ago in the one-room Aitken Schoolhouse.
Each child receives a student handbook that includes the history of the area and selections from McGuffey’s Fourth Eclectic Reader, along with penmanship and arithmetic lessons.
Included in the day-long experience are visits to the museum, the 1875 post-and-beam barn, the 1892 blacksmith shop, and the Illinois and Michigan Canal. Local artisans demonstrate such old time crafts as quilting, weaving, blacksmithing, barrel making, and rug braiding.
