Old Fashioned Girls Tea and Social Club Activities
  
 

Purpose:
To provide girls age 11 to 18 with a group setting for the enjoyment of vintage dressing, tea, vintage dancing, social events, recreational activities, and service opportunities. (NOTE: We use "tea" in the broad sense to mean a daytime social gathering that includes food and beverages.)

Parents are always welcome to "observe" (from a distance…the primary purpose of the social club is for the girls to enjoy each other's company.) Parents will also be invited to chaperone the various field trips and off-site events.

Here are some of the fun distractions we plan for the girls:

Vintage dressing -- We will provide vintage style clothing for the girls to try on and wear during the various events. They will get to experience wearing 1860s hoop skirts, 1880s bustle dresses, 1900s Gibson Girl skirts and waists, 19-teens "Titanic" era dresses, 1920s, 30s, 40s and 50s dresses. We will teach them the history of each fashion era, how people dressed, and what was happening in the country and the world in those times…not just "fashion history," but social, political, and economic history as well…because they are all tied together.

Vintage dancing -- teens and adults, co-ed: We will teach the girls vintage dancing such as waltzes, polkas, one-steps, Virginia reels, and others. Boys can participate as well so we can have parent-supervised "co-ed" vintage dances. If the group is large enough, we will use the Clinton Community Center for dance workshops…the same location as our adult vintage dance workshops.

Crafts -- sewing, painting, sculpting, pottery, hat making, and anything else that might be of interest…things that would have been done by girls a hundred or more years ago.

Girl Scout Badges -- Although we are not officially linked to the Girl Scouts, we will provide many opportunities for our girls to work on projects or perform service that can earn them Girl Scout badges.

Educational:

  • Lectures - Our "Girls Can Do Anything" series will feature women speakers who are in fields that are still considered "unusual" for girls to enter. Some of the women we already know personally include chemical, civil, and traffic engineers, a former Governor, a Naval officer, an FBI agent (!), an architect, a research biologist, a mathematics professor at Princeton, a professional musician and music professor at Lehigh, lawyers, doctors, police officers, and others. Our goal is to show the girls it's "cool" to be smart, that they can do anything they set their minds to, and they can still be "girls."
  • Red Mill Schoolhouse - We will take field trips to the Red Mill museum. One of our vintage dance friends gives a series of lectures at the Red Mill on Colonial living. Solitude House Museum - Our "home base."
  • Solitude House is the 300-year-old mansion that is now the headquarters of the Union Forge Heritage Association.
  • Field trips (co-ed): National Canal Museum -We will take a canal boat ride, "in costume," at the National Canal Boat Museum in Easton, PA. The girls (and boys) will tour the museum and learn about the canal systems that were the lifeline for shipping coal, food, and manufactured goods before the railroads were invented.
  • Steam train rides - We will go in costume to take a ride on the Black River and Western steam train in Flemington. We may also go to the Steamtown train museum in Scranton, PA.
  • Rhinebeck Aerodrome in New York…in costume (19-teens) to see real WWI bi-planes in a mock dogfight. The girls and boys will very likely be asked to participate in the parade and in the actual air show (as "spectator" actors on the ground, not in the air.)
  • Duke gardens - A trip to see the beautiful formal gardens on the Doris Duke estate in Hillsborough, NJ.
  • Other museums - Acorn Hall in Morristown, the Morris Museum, the Lackawanna Historical Society in Scranton, PA, Howell Farm, Fosterfields Farm, Fashion Institute of Technology museum, Menlo Park, the Hayden Planetarium, the Museum of Natural History in NYC, etc.

Activities:

  • Croquet, skating, badminton, picnics
    Music -- Sing-alongs and Christmas caroling at our own piano;
    nursing home recitals, concerts in the Solitude House museum by our own Tea Club girls…a string quartet, or a piano, flute, violin, cello group, etc.
  • Reading - If they don't already know them, we will introduce the girls to the Betsy-Tacy stories by Maud Hart Lovelace, Louisa May Alcott, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Lucy Maude Montgomery, and other women authors who wrote about life in earlier times.
  • Genealogy - The girls will learn how to research their own family history. Cooking, baking - At the Solitude House…The girls will learn how to make their own "goodies" for their teas.
  • Fashion shows - The girls will get to model vintage outfits in nursing homes, schools, community events, etc.
  • Dance demos - Same idea…The girls (and boys) will get to demonstrate vintage dancing, in costume!
  • Parades - We will all participate, in costume, in various community parades.
  • Victorian Days at Belvidere, Dickens Days in Clinton - We will attend in costume!
  • Oldwick Community Players - The girls and boys will be invited to act or work back-stage in community theater productions throughout the year.
  • College visits - The older girls and boys will be invited to take day trips to visit various colleges while they are juniors in high school.
  • Time Travel Weekends / Victorian Day Camp - "Dress up" living history experiences at Solitude House or at our other Union Forge Heritage Association historic property, Springside Farm.

Service:

  • Museum volunteers
  • Docents
  • Tutoring
  • Mentoring Big Sisters.


For further details or to make reservations, please contact Mrs. Jeanne Craig at 908-638-4125 for more info.