One of the highlights of our family trip to Pennsylvania last fall was getting to explore Pennsylvania Dutch Country and some of the Amish Country attractions in the area. The Amish culture has traditionally revolved around homes – you definitely won’t find art museums or concert halls around those parts. That makes a home tour especially engaging as life in the modern world increasingly diverges from a life built around farms and tight-knit local communities.
Ronks, PA, is in Lancaster County, PA, one of the largest and most well-known communities of Amish and Mennonite people. We found The Amish Village when looking for things to do with kids in Lancaster, and it was a fun and memorable peek into a different way of life.
The Amish Village Farmhouse & Village Tour
Our tour began in the sitting room area with an explanation of how local Amish groups were organized into families in a certain area that rotate hosting worship services in their homes every other Sunday. We moved into the kitchen and dining area, seeing a typical cooking setup that showed how a family would prepare and store food without connecting to the electrical grid. Moving upstairs, we learned about customs of dress and how rules are established and adjusted over time as new situations arise, and how those rules may vary by community.
After the interior part of the tour, we were free to explore the farm, schoolhouse, grounds and shops on our own. The kids liked seeing the horses and chickens, then climbing into the different wagons and pretending to drive them. The first-grader especially enjoyed the one-room schoolhouse and seeing things that she has been working on in school. There was a playground structure beside the school with a slide and several shops where we picked up some locally made treats.
From canning to schooling, I realized how some aspects of agricultural life weren’t so very different from what I remember from hearing family stories of generations of life in the country, but my kids are growing up in the suburbs. They’ve never known a world without cell phones, where the answer to any question is a search away and there are endless sources of entertainment (or distraction) at all times.
This sort of immersive experience in a culture so shaped by their faith and customs allows us to step into a different culture and try it on, look at life and society from different angles and wonder what we might take away to inspire us to live even the slightest bit differently.
Tickets:
We did the house and village tour, which was a 25-minute guided tour through the farmhouse followed by time to explore the schoolhouse, blacksmith shop, barns and wagons.
Pricing when we visited was:
$13 per person 13 and over
$7 per person ages 7-12
Free for ages 4 and under
They also offer Amish Country tours by bus and class tours for groups of 20 or more students. As always, be sure to check their website for the latest on operating hours and prices.
Accessibility:
There are only steps to get up to the second floor bedrooms on the tour, and several steps to enter the schoolhouse. The downstairs part of the tour and the grounds could certainly be enjoyed with a stroller or other mobility aids. There’s a paved trail around the area with the covered wagons and picnic benches throughout the outside grounds. Be sure to contact the venue to confirm and ask about your specific situation.
Ideas for extending learning:
How do you introduce children to a culture that isn’t seeking to engage outsiders? How can kids put themselves in the shoes of people with a value system different from their own? How can they find similarities and learn to think about societies and lifestyles? We checked out a few books from the library, asked questions as we drove around, tried to link what we were seeing to other experiences, and encouraged them to explore and wonder on their own.
Books:
Just Plain Fancy, by Patricia Polacco
A Day In The Life Of An Amish Kid: A Children’s Story, by Jeremiah Raber
Amish Cooking for Kids: For 6 To 12-Year-Old Cooks, by Phyllis Good
Play & Further Discussion:
The shops sold a Dutch Country coloring book to revisit some of the scenes of life in the area. We also bought a couple of Amish-style dolls that they are still playing with at home.
You never know what kids will pick up on and remember. It’s fun to tie in to life experiences not common to our area – clothes drying on line, school desks and classrooms without computers.
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