Four boys run across the lawn, sticks in hand, wooden hoops rolling in front of them. Several children crouch down to shoot marbles, while others try their hand at lawn bowling. It’s a scene that could have taken place in Charles Carroll Jr.’s time, but instead it is early autumn 2011, and the children are fourth-graders from Barclay Elementary School visiting Homewood Museum under the auspices of the Museum Buddies Program.

Created in 2011 by Lydia Alcock ’12, a psychology major and museums and society minor, the Museum Buddies program is still an evolving one, but its goals are clear: to mentor local students, bring more JHU undergraduates in contact with Homewood, and take advantage of Homewood as a great learning resource.

Alcock chose Barclay as a partner because of her familiarity with the school through Story Pals, a tutoring program sponsored by Kappa Kappa Gamma, and because of its proximity to campus. That the Baltimore City fourth-grade curriculum focused on Maryland history made the relationship with Homewood a natural fit.

Last fall, Alcock and three other museums and society students took 15 students from Pablo Koropecky’s fourth-grade class on a tour of Homewood, followed by a session of game playing circa 1800–1825. “They were just asking question after question,” says Alcock, about the students’ reaction to the day at Homewood. One student even questioned a lamp plugged into an electric socket in the museum after the students had toured the museum’s outhouse and had discussed the lack of electricity. “You could just see her thinking about it, trying to work it out,” says Alcock. “It was really cute.”

This spring, the students will meet three times with Koropecky’s fourth-graders. Using curriculum developed from Homewood resources, they will teach two lessons at Barclay, one focusing on genealogy, the other on maps and travel. In April, the Barclay students will make a return trip to Homewood to learn a historically appropriate craft, most likely papermaking, and to take the tour again with what Alcock hopes is a new and more nuanced perspective.

Even in its early stages, Museum Buddies has proved a challenging and exciting outreach program for Alcock. “We didn’t know how the kids would feel about Homewood, but to see them really learning and thinking about things but still having fun [without television or expensive games] was really cool,” says Alcock. “It was so satisfying to see that this could actually work.”