Children who visited the museum between 10 and 15 June were invited to dress up and take part in a special tour. The girls enjoyed wearing mutch caps - the close-fitting linen caps worn by rural Scottish women and children in the nineteenth century - and aprons and shawls, while the boys dressed up in waistcoats and caps.
In the museum's reconstructed school room the children tried their hands at schoolwork using slates and chalks. They learned how things had changed when their guide instructed them to sit silently as Victorian schoolchildren had, sometimes even sitting on their hands. They were quite surprised to be given slate to write on, and interested to see the teacher's belt that was used for punishment.
The tour included areas of a typical farm from the kitchen to the stables.
The Dunning school children appeared very knowledgeable about life in the bothy, the room where unmarried farm hands lived. Nursery nurse Alison McAlpine said many of the children came from farming backgrounds themselves. 'They seem to know a lot about it and they are certainly very interested in the old farming ways,' she said.
The museum's senior assistant, Ray Louden, encouraged the children to handle the old-fashioned objects and to relate them to their own lives.
'This shows them how lucky they are today,' said Mrs McAlpine.
