Make-Your-Own Easter Toys 1912 style

Happy Easter!

With Spring finally arriving (promise I'm not trying to jinx it with a fifth Nor'easter or anything...) and Easter weekend upon us, how did you prepare? Some of us make colored eggs of varying artistic talent or hunt for plastic eggs filled with goodies.

Everyone has their own traditions to celebrate, some of which may eed a few instructions or you might end up with brightly colored hands when dying eggs...or you still might....pink and blue are lovely Spring shades to wear anyway, right?

Here's an example of some of the ideas for how children could help out with celebrating in the Girls' Make -At-Home Things book. Yes, the picture shows the title as Boys' Make-At-Home Things - that's because the author made sure not to leave the little guys without some projects too....but Easter ideas only made it into the girls book, both of which were written in 1912 and luckily a copy of each is housed within the museum's collection.

The author, Carolyn Sherwin Bailey, was born in 1875 in Hoosick falls and earned her childhood education from her mother (also an educator and author of children's books) as well as from Lansingburg Academy.

So, if you'd like to try out some early 20th century ideas, check out the chapters that had suggestions for the girls to enjoy.

Hopefully the girls will share their Easter toys with the boys; they might have to just make do with their turning lathes and whittling tools...and wireless receiving station. No really, these are the items listed for boys to make at home, hopefully with some adult supervision.

But these things are actually really cool too so don't feel too bad about the guys being left out of the loop with Easter toys.

Click HERE to check out the chapter on making a wireless receiving station.


                                    Enjoy your Easter!

Don't forget to check out what's coming up in April at the museum by taking a look at our website calendar - docent training, canal clean sweep, and pancake breakfast are all on their way!

Boys' Make-At-Home Wireless Receiving Station

A children's book to both entertain and educate, Boys' Make-At-Home Things was published in 1912 to an audience of children with a different set of ideas of how to spend their free time than the more technology-driven past-time projects of today.

The preface reads:

 "Make-At-Home Things for Boys aims to keep boys busy ad entertained. it furnishes them with simple directions for making toys and useful articles, all of which are carefully pictured. the aim of the book, is to give boys an idea of the craft possibilities which lie in the crudest materials, often the waste material of the home and in this way to develop real artistic ability."

That's not to say that there wasn't already some craving to get in on the newest techno craze either (or that there aren't crafty kids with a DIY mindset today either). Considering the time the book was published, that craze would be wireless telegraph - aka radio. 

Invented in 1895 by the Italian, Guglielmo Marconi, it was still relatively new, especially depending on where you lived. The first permanent wireless station in the U.S. was built in 1901 at Siasconset on Nantucket Island. Stations developed across the country and the idea of this chapter was to encourage boys to build their own small receiver to be able to "cut in" on anything that might be transmitting nearby them. Since the first commercial radio station with one-off broadcasts was created in 1920 (KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), these boys had a very Battleship-like game going on in that they might not pick up on anything for a while...











Here's the chapter:

The author of this book, Carolyn Sherwin Bailey, was born in 1875 in Hoosick falls and earned her childhood education from her mother (also an educator and author of children's books) as well as from Lansingburg Academy.