Summer history programs celebrate Mount Prospect's Centennial

During July, the Mount Prospect Historical Society encouraged local children to actively celebrate Mount Prospect's Centennial through hands-on history programs that took them a century back in time.

Sporting oversize hair bows and sashes of an earlier era, area girls explored life as a Centennial Girl of 1917 at a July 19 program sponsored by the Living History Committee at the Mount Prospect Historical Society, 101 S. Maple St.

Participants chose an early 20th century name for the afternoon like Violet, Sadie, Nellie, Lillian, Ethel and Grace. Then they played outdoor relay games; toured the 1896 Central Schoolhouse; embroidered handkerchiefs in a sewing circle; and made ice cream for an ice cream social at the conclusion of the afternoon.

The following week students in grades two through five participated in the society's annual "The Science of History" program. Here, participants studied and created waterwheels in order to learn how the power generated by running water was used to help with a variety of tasks in early Mount Prospect.

In this interactive and engaging program, students became engineers and constructed their own waterwheels, and then experimented with rate of rotation and water flow.

The Science of History program is held each July.

The Mount Prospect Historical Society is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that is committed to preserving the history of Mount Prospect, through artifacts, photographs and both oral and written memories of current and former residents and businesspeople. On its campus in the heart of the village, the Society maintains the 1906 Dietrich Friedrichs house museum, carriage house, the ADA-accessible Dolores Haugh Education Center and the 1896 one-room Central School, which was moved to the museum campus in 2008.

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