Historic Germantown has partnered with four Philadelphia schools to run a program called Science Sleuths, which introduces hands-on activities and excursions to middle schoolers. The program piloted during the 2024-2025 school year and has received lots of positive feedback from both staff and students.

According to Tuomi Forrest, Historic Germantown’s executive director, Science Sleuths is based on a longstanding program called History Hunters, where fourth and fifth graders are given the opportunity to visit historical sites and learn about different eras of history. Forrest and Heather Zimmerman, the program director, have been working in tandem to get Science Sleuths up and running these past two years, although the concept has been in development for about a decade.

“The primary funding source was IMLS, Institute of Museum and Library Services Federal Grant Program, with some additional support from the Connolly Foundation, and so we were able to kind of create or recreate this concept,” Forrest said. “It ended up being a little different than the initial concept, but we were able to pilot it with four schools and had success, so now we’re running it.”

The four schools, all in the Northwest, are John F. McCloskey School, Anna L. Lingelbach School, Wissahickon Charter School and DePaul Catholic School. Through Science Sleuths, they are providing their students with a unique type of experiential learning.

“History Hunters is a little more kind of rigid curriculum. You sign up and you do basically the entire school year,” Forrest said. “Science Sleuths can be a little bit more ‘choose your own adventure’ on the schools’ side.”

At Awbury Arboretum, students learn about ecology and the watershed, and conduct their own water testing. At Historic Rittenhouse Town, site of the first paper mill in British North America, they learn about physics and hydrology. A genetics portion takes place at Stenton, built in the 1720s as a country house by scholar and scientist James Logan, who served as mayor of Philadelphia and chief justice of the colonial-era Pennsylvania Supreme Court. By swabbing their own mouths, students extract their DNA and study how Logan incorporated genetics in his farming.

The last two programs take place at Historic Fair Hill and Grumblethorpe. At Fair Hill Burial Ground, the students study climatology and test temperatures outside and within the vaults. They also explore the history of Grumblethorpe, built in 1744 by John Wister, whose family took shelter there during the 1793 yellow fever epidemic, and learn how to draw blood using a piece of silicone along with playing a game to learn more about how the virus spread.

“You can see the kids from when they first show up throughout the lessons getting more comfortable,” Zimmerman said. “They actually have a lot of the same guides, so they’re building a relationship with their teachers for field studies, and also with the sites, and so it affects how they want to interact with historic sites.”

Although teachers have the opportunity to choose which plan works best for them, each lesson builds on the previous one, creating a longer story for the students to follow. At the end of all the lessons, teachers are hoping the students gain a deeper understanding of each subject as well as a stronger grasp of the significance of historical sites. The goal is to give them the freedom to conduct their own experiments and be a part of the lessons, providing more insight to take with them for years to come.

“I think they have a sense of competency and confidence as well when you allow them to use real needles...” Zimmerman said. “They’re feeling a certain sense of competency [being] outside of the classroom because in school you get to do a lot, but to be outside somewhere and have other adults trust you to give you things in your learning, I think that’s pretty, pretty cool for them.”