Now booking field trip/ school group tours for the 2024 season!
If your group would like to visit Renfrew in 2024 (mid-March thru mid-October only), please carefully review this page then complete the inquiry form at the bottom with your desired dates and a member of our staff will get back with you.
Looking to book for 2025? Unfortunately, due to Renfrew’s fiscal year calendar structure, we are unable to make reservations for next year until after the holidays. Please contact us after January 1, 2025. Thank you.
Renfrew Museum and Park is a great place to bring your students for a fun and educational experience! Our 107-acre historic farmstead lends itself to unique, purpose-driven discussion and hands-on activities to meet your curriculum needs. Renfrew offers several field trip/school group Adventure Experience Packages to choose from. Select the option that best meets your students’ grade and interest level.
Due to the nature of our historic buildings and structures group sizes are limited. To book a field trip/school group visit your group must have a minimum of ten (10) students and one (1) adult teacher/chaperone. The maximum number of field trip/school group visit participants Renfrew can accommodate on a single day is sixty (60) people. This includes all students, teachers, school personnel, and adult chaperones. Reservations must be made at least thirty (30) days in advance for groups of thirty (30) or less and sixty (60) days prior to your desired date for groups of thirty-one (31) to sixty (60) participants (includes students, teachers, school personnel, and adult chaperones). Please be aware that Renfrew is a museum and park, other events and usage of the museum and grounds will continue during your visit. The scheduled portion of field trips/school group visits, guided by museum staff, begin no earlier than 10:00am and must conclude no later than 2:00pm. Field Trip/School Group visits are available Tuesdays through Thursdays only, between mid-March and mid-October. Renfrew Museum and Park reserves the right to deny any request.
Adventure Experiences Tour Packages:
Select your preferred experience based on grade/age level from these listed below:
Adventure Experience 1 (For Grades Pre-K/Ages 3-5):
Farmstead Fun for Wee Ones: $5 per student. 60-minutes; Max. 30 participants (includes students, teachers, school personnel, and adult chaperones)
Join our interpretive staff for an hour-long program designed especially for little learners! Divided into three 20-minute segments, children will make a craft, enjoy a song and story, then participate in sensory play – all inspired by life on our historic Pennsylvania German farmstead.
Craft: First, children and their accompanying grown-ups will make farm animal hand puppets from paper bags. Cut out and color three different kinds: a pig, a sheep, and a duck. Song & Story: Next, we’ll use our puppets while we sing “Old Man Royer Had a Farm” and read an interactive storybook together. Sensory Farm Play: Last, participants will have a chance to act out typical farm chores including “milking” our faux cows, “washing” laundry on a scrub board, carding fluffy “wool”, and “planting and harvesting” pretend veggies in sand.
Adventure Experience 2 (For Grades K-12):
Farmstead Fun for Everyone: $5 per student. 90-minutes; Max. 60 participants (includes students, teachers, school personnel, and adult chaperones)
Join Renfrew for an overview tour of our 300+ year history on the Royer Farmstead. Firmly rooted in our Pennsylvania German heritage, Renfrew’s story is quintessentially American and closely mirrors the narrative of our young nation with central themes of industriousness, ingenuity, and innovation.
By the close of the nineteenth century, the property boasted two successful farmsteads, a grist mill, lime kiln, and several outbuildings. Later occupants of the site placed their own marks on the landscape, resulting in a varied built environment with unique structures spanning the Federal to Edwardian Eras. Renfrew’s final private residents, Edgar and Emma Nicodemus, lovingly restored the property which was bequeathed to the Borough of Waynesboro as a gift to its citizens following Emma’s death in 1973. Groups will tour the 1812 Royer House, furnished with a host of interesting decorative arts and residential artifacts spanning three centuries; several historic outbuildings, including the summer kitchen, milk house, and smoke house, where important everyday tasks took place; and exhibit galleries inside our Visitors Center, a converted Victorian barn, featuring permanent displays of Bell Family historic folk pottery, Pennsylvania-Kentucky longrifles, and tradesmen’s tools. Students will be introduced to the people who lived and worked at Renfrew over the centuries hearing about the site’s earliest settlement in the 18th century, through the farming heritage and intense social and technological change of the nineteenth century, to its restoration by our last private residents. Along the way, students will be inspired by authentic stories of ordinary people, just like them, who made their own lasting impact on this historic property.
Adventure Experience 3 (For Grades K-12):
Farmstead Fun with Craft Add-On: $10 per student. 2.5 hours; Max 60 participants (includes students, teachers, school personnel, and adult chaperones)
Add a hands-on activity! This two-hour experience includes the full Farmstead Fun for Everyone tour, along with choice of a 30-minute, staff-lead craft inspired by artifacts in Renfrew’s collection that your class will see on tour.
Choice 1: Watercolor Frakturs – Pennsylvania German families marked special occasions like births and marriages with colorful hand-painted images and medieval-style lettering. Students will be inspired by Renfrew’s collection of antique frakturs on exhibit in the 1812 Royer House, then paint their own using watercolors.
Choice 2: Paper Quilt Blocks – Colorful quilts kept early Franklin County families warm. Students will see original examples while on tour, then learn about different designs, making their own stylized quilt blocks based on historic patterns out of geometric shapes from patterned paper. Once everyone’s “quilt block” is done, teachers may take them back to school and tie them together to make one large “quilt” to display in your classroom!
Field Trip Map
