LINCOLN — Girls with floral patterned bonnets and boys wearing suspenders shuffled into the one-room school house.
Instead of colorful and cartoon-covered lunch boxes, plain tin cans carrying the fourth graders' turkey sandwiches and cookies hung in the entryway.
No computers or projectors lined the classroom walls — only chalkboards.
The students from Arnold Elementary School in Lincoln, who visited Heritage School Tuesday, took part in a dedication ceremony for the school house and Hudson Cabin.
The two buildings were relocated earlier this year from State Fair Park in Lincoln. The buildings will now be next to the Nature Center at Pioneers Park.
Lincoln Mayor Chris Beutler on Tuesday called the historic buildings “two new treasures” at Pioneers Park, which is on the west side of Lincoln.
With the State Fair's move to Grand Island, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln plans to use the former fairgrounds property for Innovation Campus, a public-private research park.
Heritage School has been a popular destination for Nebraska school children for 35 years, said Marilyn Moore, associate superintendent for instruction for the Lincoln Public Schools.
Every day during the academic year, the school house welcomes about 25 fourth-graders from the Lincoln Public Schools and surrounding public and private schools to experience and learn about life in the late 1800s.
“It's really hard when you're 10 to understand what decades are,” Moore said. “This makes them come alive.”
The kids learn penmanship, arithmetic, history, geography and orthography, the study of letters and spelling. They also learn how to grind corn and make butter.
Students have the option of dressing in 19th century attire.
“It's the way they would've done it in 1892,” said Mary Lou Henn, who is in her second year of teaching classes at the Heritage School. “(The kids) think it's wonderful.”
Heritage School was built during the Great Depression as the District 113 Cunningham School near Valparaiso. The Hudson Cabin was built in 1863 by Thomas Jefferson Hudson south of the village of Lancaster, which later became Lincoln.
Both buildings are owned by the city and also will be open for public tours.
Beutler said it seemed like a natural fit to move Heritage School and Hudson Cabin to Pioneers Park because of its prairie grasses and rolling hills.
“This will be something students will remember all of their lives,” he said.
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