Tudor Hall Plantation provides an educational setting to learn how free and enslaved Virginia families lived more than 150 years ago. Our educators lead students in learning opportunities to explore the material culture of these Virginia families, providing insight into how diverse groups of Southerners lived, worked, and interacted with one another. This comparison allows students to discover what freedom really meant to the men and women who sought it so dearly.

Students discover the importance of the environment, terrain and the evolution of tactics throughout the war, while reinforcing the names of key leaders and the important battles in which they fought. Students learn the story of one soldier who faced the terror of combat on the very battlefield of Pamplin Historical Park. We will show you the park’s original Confederate earthworks and full-scale re-created earthworks, to assist students in visualizing and appreciating Civil War battles as never before.

In this interactive classroom program students will come to realize that the Civil War was not a spontaneous event. Students will learn the controversies and compromises that led to Southern secession, the social and economic differences between the North and South, and the role of slavery in dividing the country. Bar graphs and mathematics help to illustrate why Southern planters opposed abolition. A large puzzle map of the United States graphically demonstrates the conflict over the continued expansion of slavery in the United States.

Pamplin Historical Park now offers an extended 49-minute version of the film “War So Terrible” for high school students. The film vividly portrays Civil War combat as seen through the eyes of soldiers from both sides. (Note: This film contains graphic images of Civil War combat. Viewer discretion is advised.)

Experience the life of a Civil War soldier, in camp, on the march, and on the drill field. Our interpreter will teach your students how average citizens learned to be soldiers by putting students through the very military drill practiced by new recruits. The interpreter also provides a weapons demonstration, showing our program of Load in Nine Times. Students will learn how soldiers survived non-combat threats to include camp food, punishments, and diseases.

Students are placed in the midst of the tumultuous Reconstruction era as witnesses to history at Ford’s Theater, observers of the post-war South, and participants in the newly won voting rights for African Americans. Video technology brings the sights, sounds, and voices of Reconstruction to life, allowing students to understand the divisive opinions throughout the country as the United States tried to rebuild. Students will learn about the difficulties, accomplishments, and failures of Reconstruction.

Students take part in an interactive program that gives them a foundational understanding of “Simple Machines.” With engaging classroom tools and hands-on activities, student groups understand the development of screws, levers, wedges, and others, and the scientific formulas behind their functions. After which, the students venture through the park to discover Simple Machines in real-life draped in a historical background.

Students engage in the process of barter and trade. In the inhospitable land English colonizers settled in North America, the distance and length of travel to Europe, and the ill-equipped and ill-informed Englishmen, barter and trade became the common practice for commerce and survival. Learning how to grow agricultural product such as tobacco, cotton, and indigo, the students will then participate in a hands-on activity by trading those goods for items connected to the mother country’s manufacturing, or trade with Native Americans.

In this interactive classroom program, students will gain an understanding that the American War for Independence was not a spontaneous event. Students will discover the social, economic, and political relationship between the Virginia Colony and Great Britain as well as understand the principles and events that convinced the colonists to declare independence and go to war with Great Britain, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Students will also discover the important contributions, leadership, and experiences of Virginians during the war, including but not limited to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Armistead Lafayette, Indigenous Peoples, women, and freed and enslaved African Americans.